Ceylinco Life ends 2024 with 12 free medical camps under ‘Waidya Hamuwa’

Ceylinco Life’s free medical camps in Neluwa (Galle) and Deniyaya  (Matara)

Ceylinco Life recently conducted a free medical camp in Neluwa in Galle under the  company’s ‘Waidya Hamuwa’ community health programme, ending 2024 with 12 such camps that benefitted more than 2,600 people.
The long-running ‘Waidya Hamuwa’ programme has now completed 20 years, providing access to doctors and diagnostic tests to well over 150,000 people, and has played a significant role in helping them treat previously undiagnosed non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
This year’s medical camps were conducted at towns in Badulla, Ratnapura, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Monaragala, Hambantota, Ampara, Polonnaruwa, Puttalam, Kurunegala, Matara and Galle. The Company said the medical teams accompanied by Ceylinco Life personnel had travelled more than 5,000 kilometres in 2024 to conduct these camps.
At each of these camps, residents of these areas were able to undergo testslikerandom 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. Each visitor thereafter had the opportunity to meet a doctor to discuss the test results and receive medical advice.
About 58 percent of those who underwent testing at this year’s camps were women, and the medical teams that conducted the camps have reported many previously undiagnosed cases of hypercholesterolemia and dyslipidemia with heart conditions, diabetes, hypertension, bronchial asthma and inadequately treated fungal infections, the company said.
The objective of the Waidya Hamuwa programme is to screen people for non-communicable diseases, 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.
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.