Ceylinco Life donates Paediatric Dengue High Dependency Unit to Jaffna Hospital

Saturday, 3 January 2015 04:51 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Ceylinco Life has donated a fully-equipped and furnished Intensive Care Unit (ICU) that will serve as a dedicated Dengue High Dependency ward for children at the Jaffna Teaching Hospital, the leading hospital in the Northern Province of the country. This is the third ward of its kind donated by the life insurance leader to a state hospital in Sri Lanka. The new Dengue High Dependency Unit of 650 square feet is located within Ward 11, the Professorial Paediatric unit of the hospital. It comprises of five ICU beds, each allocated an area of 130 square feet. The beds are equipped with bed-head panels with wall oxygen, bedside cupboards, over-bed tables, saline stands and bystander reclining chairs. The unit is also equipped with five multi-parameter monitors with a centralised system, five infusion pumps, five syringe pumps, three portable suction apparatus units and an air purifying unit. As part of the project Ceylinco Life undertook the refurbishment of the area allocated from Ward 11 for the new unit. This included minor construction work and painting of the ward. The ceiling of the unit has been embellished with cartoon pictures to create a child-friendly atmosphere for the patients who will be treated at the unit. The completed unit was formally handed over to the hospital by a team of senior representatives of Ceylinco Life led by the company’s Managing Director/CEO R. Renganathan. “Dengue continues to put healthcare institutions under heavy pressure. It is our hope that this unit exclusively for dengue patients needing extra care, will help save many young lives through the allocation of all the equipment required for monitoring their condition and treatment,” Renganathan said. He said the donation of the HDU is part of a longstanding commitment by Ceylinco Life to support the improvement of facilities in the state healthcare sector.

“The generosity and good corporate citizenship of Ceylinco Life in donating this invaluable facility to our hospital will be greatly appreciated by the people of Jaffna,” said Dr. Geetanjali Sathiadas, Head/Senior Lecturer in Paediatrics, and the Consultant Paediatrician at the Professorial Paediatrics Unit of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Jaffna. “It could make a very significant difference in aiding the recovery of children afflicted with dengue.” Over the past two years, Ceylinco Life has donated High Dependency Units to two other hospitals, the National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL) and the Lady Ridgeway Children’s Hospital (LRH). The surgical High Dependency Unit donated to Ward 6A of the Professorial Surgical Unit of the National Hospital provides intensive post-operative care to patients who undergo complex gastrointestinal, hepato-pancreatico-biliary and other general surgical procedures at that hospital. In December 2012, the company and a group of well-wishers donated a sophisticated High Dependency and Research Unit exclusively for the treatment of children afflicted by dengue to the Paediatric Professorial Ward I of the Faculty of Medicine at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital. Sri Lanka’s life insurance leader for the past 11 years, Ceylinco Life is responsible for a series of multi-faceted community programs conducted annually in many parts of Sri Lanka. The company’s flagship project ‘Waidya Hamuwa’ – a series of free medical camps conducted by teams of travelling doctors – has directly interacted with, and touched the lives of more than 130,000 people to date. In the area of education, Ceylinco Life is committed to supporting the development of educational infrastructure for underprivileged schools in rural areas. This consists principally of building classroom blocks for schools and providing water supply facilities to those in need. The company has donated classrooms to 60 schools under this programme.