The Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayatissa

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Speaker, for various reasons, some hospitals have been upgraded in status; in certain instances, divisional hospitals have been designated as base hospitals. Merely designating a hospital as a base hospital would require providing a minimum cadre of specialists. As you know, Hon. Member, there is a shortage of specialists.

¶ 02 At present, our primary focus is to fill the specialist shortages at the Vavuniya District General Hospital and the Mannar District General Hospital. At Mannar, except for two specialists, all others are scheduled to proceed for overseas training, and we are not yet in a position to send board-certified specialists there. Therefore, rather than deploying specialists to “A” or “B” category base hospitals, our immediate priority is to address specialist shortages at district general hospitals where facilities already exist. Based on the number completing training and returning, we can then provide specialists to fill gaps at base hospitals subsequently. I thank you for drawing attention to this matter.