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Karapitiya crowned Galle National Hospital
Pic by Shirangika Lokukarawita
Now there is one in the south, whereas the first was in the capital and the second was in the hills, catering to the sick of Sri Lanka.
The Karapitiya Teaching Hospital this week joined the prestigious ranks of National Hospitals, the third for the whole of the country, after the National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL), Colombo, and the Kandy National Hospital. It is now the Galle National Hospital.
“Our mission is to be among the topmost healthcare providers in the country,” said its Director Dr. Ranga Sabhapathige when contacted by the Sunday Times.
Asked what the main criterion is to be declared a National Hospital, he said that it is a bed strength of 2,500. Even though the hospital currently has 2,066 beds, this number would increase to more than 2,800 by the end of the year, with a Professorial Unit and a medical and surgical building complex under construction now. The Professorial Unit is linked to the Faculty of Medicine, University of Ruhuna.
While the ‘catchment area’ of the Galle National Hospital is the Southern Province as well as parts of the Sabaragamuwa and Uva Provinces, it dispenses treatment and care under all specialties including cardiothoracic surgery and renal transplants, except obstetrics & gynaecology (which has its own German-Sri Lanka Friendship New Women’s Hospital), it is understood.
With regard to the staff, Dr. Sabhapathige said there are around 120 Medical Specialists of the Health Ministry attached to the hospital along with 490 junior doctors and 1,900 nurses. The full cadre of staff is around 4,000.
The hospital’s Outpatients’ Department (OPD) has more than 1,000 patient visits per day, while admissions amount to about 1,600 a day.
“There is no major issue caused by the brain drain of staff,” Dr. Sabhapathige assured when asked. A few of the ‘firsts’ to the credit of this new National Hospital, in the past, include the establishment of a well-organized fully-fledged Emergency Treatment Centre; saving lives through the ECMO (Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation) procedure as the one-and-only national centre; the use of ‘Therapeutic Plasma Exchange’ or plasmapheresis as an effective treatment modality in rat fever (leptospirosis) patients with lung haemorrhage; the setting up of ‘Sath Sith – Sath Kam Palliative Care Centre’ believed to be one of its kind in South Asia; having the shortest waiting list for cardiothoracic surgeries; and having a fully-computerised paediatric neurology clinic.
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