Inginiyagala District Hospital

In a district lacking medical capacity, the loss of key facilities keeps the Inginiyagala District Hospital underutilized. 

Inginiyagala district hospital was first of its type established in the entire Galoya valley in late 1940s by the first Prime Minister of independent Ceylon, Hon, Don Stephen Senanayake, with the assistance of British Government. At the time the hospital was the leading facility of its type for the newly developed Galoya Project, the first multi-function hydroelectric scheme in independent Sri Lanka. As well as the hospital, development in Galoya included a police station, paddy processing factory, post office and many other community services.

Mr. K.J Wijetunga, Community organiser, founder of the Eastern Provincial Blood Bank, Chairman of Hospital Management Committee, Provincial Hospital, Inginiyagala

Till the late eighties this remained the leading hospital in the entire Digamadulla region with facilities including an operation theatre.

The General hospitals (Ampara), Base hospitals (Siyambalanduwa, Kalmunai, Bibile) were established years later. At the time surgical operations were conducted in Inginiyagala, the Ampara hospital was only a central dispensary. The passing years saw these other hospitals develop substantially, notably Ampara hospital, which became the leading hospital in entire Eastern province of Sri Lanka. 

Despite Inginiyagala having adequate shelter to facilitate over 70 beds within the premises, the hospital fell into some disrepair, and lost the faith of the community, who preferred to travel further distance to better-equipped facilities.  Its operation theatre is no longer functional. The medical laboratory which is essential to run a hospital with bed capacity of 70 has was closed five years ago. The average number of inward patients per day has fallen to 5-6, despite this hospital serving over 225 sqr.km of land area and a population nearing 35,000. As an agricultural area, patient presentations frequently include snake bites and pesticides poisoning. The hospital has almost no facilities to tackle them except to transfer them to another nearby hospital, which itself lacks capacity.

But now Inginiyagala district hospital has an entrepreneurial young doctor who has moved from Colombo with his family.  With the support of his new community and a helping hand from the Aspirations Foundation and partners, his goal is to rebuild facilities to so they may once again meet community demands.  The prime goal is to set up a laboratory for the hospital and necessary facilities to manage snake bites and poisoning by means of a setting up a ''primary  care unit". Below is shown the requirements to do this project and the estimated cost.

Get involved!

The project requires:

Medical expertise (details TBC by local partners, please watch this space) funding raising, water tanks, build restoration, and lab and medical facilities detailed and costed below.  

If you’re student nurse, doctor, medical lab technician or community development student (from Deakin or one of our partner institutions both in Australia or Sri Lanka) and are prepared to raise funds for the project, provide expertise overseeing the purchase and installation contact the GCP office today to see how you may get involved.  You may be invited to participate to the multinational Project team travelling to Ampara, Sri Lanka in January 2015.

 

Laboratory equipments needed for the Lab.

Necessary equipment	Estimated cost
Hematology analyzer	750,000 SLR
Biochemistry analyzer	250,000 SLR
Microscope	75,000 SLR
Variable pipettes(2)	40,000 SLR
Centrifuge	110,000 SLR
ESR stand with tubes	20,000 SLR
Chemicals	25,000 SLR
GRAND TOTAL	12,70,000 SLR (A$10,400)