Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2018-06-05

Provision of the State of the Art Medical Equipment

- Presently, cancer has been identified as the second major cause of death in Sri Lanka owing to diseases. There is a tendency for patients with a sound financial position to seek treatment from centres in foreign countries due to the lack of advanced facilities of modern technology in Sri Lanka to control the disease. If there is a possibility of the early detection of the disease, its development in more than 1/3 of the patients could be prevented but around 70% of all cancer cases in the low and middle income countries are diagnosed after being too far gone and as a result, the deaths of cancer cases have increased.

Having taken the situation into consideration, it has been proposed to implement a project to procure and install a 3 Tesla MRI Scanner at the National Cancer Hospital, Maharagama for early detection and diagnosis of the disease and a Gamma Knife Package and a PET/CT Scanner at the Teaching Hospital in Kandy. Accordingly, the proposal made by Hon. (Dr.) Rajitha Senaratne, the Minister of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine, to obtain a comprehensive proposal from Odelga Med G.m.b.H, Austria and to conduct loan negotiations with the UniCredit Bank of Austria to secure the funds required for the purpose, was approved by the Cabinet.