The Hon. (Dr.) Nishantha Samaraweera

¶ 01 Question to the Minister of Health and Mass Media:

¶ 02 (a) Will he state, separately - (i) the number of specialist doctors’ services available in Sri Lanka, the names of those services and the number of specialist doctors in each of such services; (ii) the number of secondary, tertiary and specialized-care hospitals according to the 2020 classification, in which specialist doctors’ services are not available due to the shortage of specialist doctors and the number of such vacancies prevailing in them; (iii) the number of those who retired, vacated, obtained overseas leave, died and resigned from each category of the specialist doctors’ services from 2020 to 2024; (iv) the number of those who were selected for each specialist doctors’ service from 2020 to 2024; (v) if the required number of specialist doctors were selected through a competitive examination based on shortages/retirements, how many were selected in each of the past five years; and (vi) the number of specialist doctors over the age of 60 years and in the age band of 55-60?

¶ 03 (b) Will he also state - (i) the number of graded hospitals which should have specialist doctors’ services; (ii) if the Post-Graduate Institute and the relevant College do not pass specialist doctors in necessary numbers, the reasons for it; and (iii) whether steps will be taken to rectify it?

¶ 04 (c) If not, why?