By Kushali Atukorale
Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) yesterday charged that there were irregularities in the Health Ministry’s procedure in supplying equipment to hospitals.

Spokesman for the GMOA, Dr Upul Gunasekara told The Bottom Line that the Colombo National Hospital (CNH) was currently in urgent need of a CT scan machine as the available machines were out of order. However, the officials in the Health Ministry had instead sent the CT scan machine initially allocated to the CNH, to Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital (SJH). The GMOA insists that the machine is more important to the National hospital, as more of the wounded soldiers are referred there.

“The Health Ministry should provide medical equipment based on the needs of the hospitals, and not on personal contacts and favoritism. Nearly 50,000 odd scans are annually performed at the CNH. But for the past four days we had to send patients to the Lady Ridgeway Hospital (LRH) or SJH, since out of three CT scan machines two are out of order and the other machine is without CT filming,” he said.

Dr. Gunasekara reiterated that although they had obtained a new CT scan machine recently, it was taken to SJH although the latter hospital performed a comparatively lesser number of scanning than the CNH. He further said that the Health Ministry’s intention was to provide all the facilities to SJH, since most of the ministers and parliamentarians preferred to get medical treatment from the SJH and not from the CNH.

He also said that during the last four days, all patients and army casualties were being sent to other hospitals, whether their illnesses were serious or not. “Having to transport patients from one hospital to another, just for a CT scan, is an unnecessary waste of time, besides putting patients through a lot of inconvenience”, he charged.