Move to 'examine' and 'treat' hospitals

Nadira GUNATILLEKE

Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena has launched a special programme to 'examine' and 'treat' all state hospitals coming under the purview of the central government.

The Colombo National Hospital has already been 'examined' and 'treated', a Health Ministry spokesman said. According to the spokesman, Minister Sirisena has commenced a special programme to look into all the issues related to one state hospital every two weeks, meet all relevant officials and parties and solve all issues in connection with the hospital.

This has been done in connection with the Colombo National Hospital. The main objective of the programme is to ensure the smooth functioning of all state hospitals coming under the purview of the Central Government (Health Ministry) and offer the best free health care service to the public.

There are around 40 state hospitals under the purview of the health ministry.

Two state hospitals due to be reviewed every month, he said.

Meanwhile, the ministry will gather information on doctors, nurses and all health staff attached to each hospital, their services, medical equipment, drug stocks, patients, types of sicknesses detected from in-house and OPD patients etc during the review.

It will assist the ministry to develop a data base in future, he added.