The National Hospital has been compelled to send patients to Lady Ridgeway Hospital and the Sri Jayewardenepura Teaching Hospital as its two CT scanning machines are out of order. The National Hospital performs over 50,000 scans annually.

A spokesman for the Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA), Dr. Upul Gunasekara said that the hospital is compelled to send critical patients in need of urgent scanning to either of the two hospitals.

"This problem has emerged due to the poor administration of the Health Ministry and its officials. They have no inkling as to where priority should be given," he said.

"They have been funding a white elephant like the Sri Jayewardenepura Teaching Hospital when their main concern should be the National Hospital, where medical treatment and procedure is free of cost," he asserted.

The Sri Jayewardenepura Hospital receives all benefits from the Health Ministry, but patients have to pay for their surgery, scans and even the ‘panadol tablet,’ he said. "They don’t do even one tenth of the number of scans done at the National Hospital," Dr. Gunasekara said.

He said the Ministry had given the Jayewardenepura Hospital a new CT scanner. The one they were using earlier was out of order practically every day. It was handed over to the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital after the new scanner was given. It’s a mystery as to how the scanner which was at Jayewardenepura started working once again after it was given to Anuradhapura. It was probably something to do with the location of the hospital or the method used to operate the machine, he quipped.

However, the National Hospital has been suffering without its scanners for some time now. But, the Ministry has yet to solve the issue of the two "hard working Computed Tomography machines of the National Hospital," he said.

Chief of the Colombo National Hospital, Dr. Hector Weerasinghe, when contacted, said that the two machines are pretty old – as old as 15 – 20 years. "They have been used more than their life span, he said. The Bio Medical Engineering Department of the Health Ministry has been asked to repair the two old machines and till such time, patients are sent in ambulances to LRH for scanning.

"LRH has a fairly new machine," Dr. Weerasinghe said.