Ceylinco Life begins ‘Waidya Hamuwa’ for 18th year
Close to 950 people received free medical consultations and diagnostics services recently, as Ceylinco Life kicked off its ‘Waidya Hamuwa’ (Meet the doctor) community programme for the 18th year with four medical camps.
The first four medical camps of 2024 took place in the Badulla, Ratnapura, Trincomalee and Batticaloa districts, providing residents an opportunity to undergo essential medical tests and to discuss their health issues with doctors dispatched to these areas by Ceylinco Life.
Among the tests conducted for them free-of-charge were Random or Fasting Blood Sugar, blood pressure, ECG, serum cholesterol and urine tests for Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). In addition, visitors also underwent Body Mass Index (BMI) and vision checks by trained medical technicians. The beneficiaries of these medical camps included farmers, housewives, self-employed people and tea plantation workers, the company said.
‘Waidya Hamuwa’ programme designed to take teams of doctors and medical technicians and diagnostic equipment to far-flung towns and villages across Sri Lanka, was launched in 2004. The company has to-date conducted more than 400 medical camps to date under this programme, benefitting well over 150,000 people.
The objective of the programme is to screen people for noncommunicable diseases (NCDS), to prescribe medicines to control them, and to provide medical advice on the prevention of NCDS by maintaining a healthy lifestyle. It was launched as a response to the increasing prevalence of long queues to obtain health services from the government sector and the spiraling costs of private sector health care, problems that have only grown more acute in the 20 years since the programme commenced.
The medical teams that conduct these camps have reported many previously undiagnosed cases of hypercholesterolemia, diabetes, hypertension, bronchial asthma and heart conditions, as well as inadequately treated fungal infections.
Ceylinco Life’s corporate social responsibility commitments relating to the health sector also involve support to government hospitals. The company has built and donated fully-equipped High Dependency Units (HDUS) to the Colombo South Teaching Hospital, Kalubowila, the National Hospital, Colombo, the Lady Ridgeway Children’s Hospital, the Jaffna Teaching Hospital and the Kandy Teaching Hospital. HDUS are needed to upgrade a patient from normal care or as a step down from intensive care, helping release beds in the intensive care units. These units are used for post-surgery care, before transferring patients to the wards, or to treat an intensive disease.
Additionally, Ceylinco Life built and donated a piped oxygen system to the Matale District General Hospital in 2023, connecting the hospital’s central oxygen concentrator with the wards, to provide an uninterrupted supply of life-saving oxygen to nearly 300 beds.