The Hon. (Dr.) Hansaka Wijemuni - Deputy Minister of Health
Deputy Minister Hansaka Wijemuni acknowledged communication difficulties in hospitals and said the Health Ministry has begun awareness programmes for staff on sign language and other communication methods, with plans to expand them. He stated that the Ministry’s objective is to ensure hospital staff provide necessary support to admitted patients with disabilities without requiring external attendants or family members. He attributed remaining gaps to administrative issues, including staff being diverted to other minor duties, and said the Ministry is reviewing the situation hospital by hospital to streamline the system.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, there is indeed a communication issue. Therefore, we have already started a programme to raise awareness among our staff on sign language and other communication methods, and we hope to expand it.
¶ 02 Regarding assigning someone to look after an admitted patient with a disability, the objective of the Ministry of Health is that such external attendants should not be required, and that the hospital staff should provide the necessary support. While many facilities do so, in some hospitals a family member is still required to stay. This occurs because staff assigned for that function are diverted to handle other minor needs in the hospital. The problem is mainly administrative. We are studying this hospital by hospital and streamlining it. Our aim is to transform the system so that patients do not need any attendant from outside to receive necessary care.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 17 February 2026 ·No. 23279 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/5813
Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Hansaka Wijemuni - Deputy Minister of Health. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 17 February 2026. No. 23279. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/5813