Ceylinco Life helps save lives with gift of portable ventilator to NHSL

Tuesday, 6 May 2014 00:05 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Ceylinco Life has donated a portable ventilator to Wards 49 and 47B of the National Hospital of Sri Lanka (NHSL) in response to a request from the Consultant Physician in charge. The portable ventilator is to be used to provide artificial breathing to critically ill patients at these wards and while they are in transit from the wards to the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Thanking the company for its generosity in a letter to Ceylinco Life CEO R. Renganathan, Dr. Harshini Fernando, the Consultant Physician in charge of Wards 49 and 47B of the National Hospital said among the most benefitted by the donation would be patients with respiratory muscle paralysis due to neurological diseases, after snake bite or as a result of organo-phosphate poisoning. “In all these situations, their breathing difficulty occurs as a temporary phenomenon, and death can be prevented if their breathing is restored by some means,” she said. “Most of these patients are young and have been active and healthy before the illness. If a ventilator maintains their breathing during this temporary inactive state, they will recover back to normal.” Patients with sudden onset heart failure, chest infection and severe attacks of asthma would also benefit from the portable ventilator, Dr. Fernando said. She said due to the non-availability of beds with ventilators at the ICU such patients are often kept in the ward, with either ward staff of relatives of the patients providing artificial breathing through a manually operated bag valve mask apparatus known as an ‘ambu bag.’ Earlier this year, Ceylinco Life donated a surgical High Dependency Unit constructed, furnished and equipped by the company to Ward 6A of the Professorial Surgical Unit of the National Hospital, as part of its continuing commitment to the healthcare sector. In December 2012, the company and a group of well-wishers donated a sophisticated High Dependency & Research Unit exclusively for the treatment of children afflicted by Dengue to the Paediatric Professorial Ward I of the Faculty of Medicine at Lady Ridgeway Children’s Hospital (LRH).