May 09, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Institute of Technological Studies (ITS) which has formed a partnership with a foreign partnership to start a medical college says its output will be readily absorbed in to healthcare sector. ITS head E M S Edirisinghe, who is also the president of the Oasis, a private hospital says there is a shortage of qualified doctors in the country.
He said Oasis hospital would need thirty or forty doctors immediately to fill its entire cadre.
“But they are not available,” Edirisinghe said. “Either we have to import or we have to depend on those who are working in the government sector. So this is not an acceptable solution to this country’s health care problem.”
St. Theresa’s Medical College, partnering with a medical college of the same name in St. Kitts in the Caribbean will be Sir Lanka’s first private medical college.
The college would absorb a few of the tens of thousands who pass the local advanced level exams but fail to make into the limited available state university places, which are run with tax-payer money.
In Sri Lanka only six percent of those who pass the advanced level examination have places in state universities.
Students who have completed their second