• Angiogram machine lacking in Uva, GMOA notes
• 170 heart patients diagnosed daily, says NHSL cardiologist

The Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) has raised concerns over the recent number of deaths that have taken place at the Teaching Hospital in Badulla, noting that out of the 1,883 postmortems conducted over the course of last year, 770 persons were found to have died of heart attacks.

Speaking on the matter, GMOA Deputy Secretary Dr. Palitha Rajapaksha attributed the high number of deaths caused by heart attacks to the absence of an angiogram machine. He revealed that in the past year alone, 2,179 patients had been admitted to the cardiac unit, of which only 750 were able to do the angiogram, adding that nearly 40% of the hospital’s deaths were caused by heart attacks.

“There are no angiogram machines in the Badulla District, the Uva Province, and the Ratnapura Teaching Hospital. Because of this, the entire population of 1.5 million people within the Uva Province is forced to go to either the Colombo National Hospital, the Kandy National Hospital, the Nagoda General Hospital in Kalutara, the Karapitiya Teaching Hospital, the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital, or the Polonnaruwa District General Hospital to get an angiogram done,” Dr. Rajapaksha stated in this regard, emphasising the inconvenience caused to patients and the difficulties that they face.

Meanwhile, a cardiac specialist at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, Dr. Gotabhaya Ranasinghe also raised concerns about the rapid increase in the number of heart patients reported daily, stressing that nearly 170 such patients are diagnosed every day.