They could not find the switch

Nadira Gunatilleke

A brand new dental chair at a leading teaching hospital in the North Western Province had been lying unused for three months because the authorities failed to find the switch of the chair, a Health Ministry spokesman said.

According to the spokesman, the operators of the chair did not know how to operate it. “The switch was on the chair and not next to the plug base on the wall. Therefore the operators of the chair did not know how to switch on the chair. They claimed that the chair was out of order,” the spokesman said.

“They told the Health Ministry about the ‘broken’ brand new dental chair.

The ministry sent a technicians to examine the chair and to repair it.

The technicians sent from the ministry is Biomedical Engineering Unit found that there was nothing wrong with chair,” he said.

“For three continuous months, the hospital’s Dental Unit authorities sent back patients who turned up at the hospital seeking dental treatment, saying that the dental chair of the unit was out of order, he added.