President Ranil Wickremesinghe stressed the imperative of modernizing the education and health sectors to ensure the country’s future prosperity and development.
The President highlighted a significant shortfall in capital expenditure for education and health over the past three and a half decades. It is now planned to increase capital expenditure in these sectors starting from this year.President Ranil Wickremesinghe made this remark while attending the inauguration of the “German-Sri Lanka Friendship New Women’s Hospital” in Karapitiya Galle, hailed as the largest maternity hospital in South Asia, earlier yesturday (27).
The six-story hospital claims 640 beds, 6 operating theatres, emergency treatment units, intensive care units, laboratories, infant intensive care units, special paediatric units, and state-of-the-art medical facilities. Additionally, it features water purification and recycling unit.The German government has contributed Euro 25 million (LKR 3570 million) in this project, in addition to providing medical equipment.Initially, eight hundred perches were allocated for the hospital’s construction, but later, two additional plots of land were acquired, increasing the total area of the hospital to nearly one thousand perches.
Former Chancellor of Germany, Helmut Kohl, made this significant donation towards the construction of a new maternity hospital in Sri Lanka. This gesture came after witnessing the devastation caused by the tsunami to Mahmodara Hospital Galle, the largest maternity hospital in the southern province,
during his vacation in December 2004 at a tourist hotel in Talpe, Habaraduwa.Following the inauguration of the new hospital, plans are underway to relocate the Mahmodara Maternity Hospital from its current location.President Ranil Wickremesinghe also visited the newly opened maternity hospital to inspect its facilities,
including the state-of-the-art surgery rooms.President Wickremesinghe expressed gratitude by presenting a memento to the German Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Dr. Felix Neumann, in appreciation of the generous donation received from the German government.
