Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children (LRH) is the premier public children’s hospital which provides treatment to children from all corners of Sri Lanka, completely free of charge. It is in fact the largest Children’s Hospital in the world. However, when it comes to heart diseases and critical illnesses, it is not in a position to provide timely and appropriate treatment to all children in need, unintentionally and inadvertently endangering the lives of thousands of such children
every year. Out of 3000 children born every year with heart diseases it has facilities to treat only about 1500. In the Medical Intensive Care Unit (ICU), around 100 requests are made to admit critically ill children to the ICU every month, but sadly, it can accommodate only 30-40. This clearly highlights the need for expansion in a formidable quest towards saving these children.
Little Hearts is a national project organised by the Sri Lanka College of Paediatricians to construct a Cardiac and Critical Care Complex at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children to address this issue. The cost of the project is 15 million USD, out of which 50% is already raised through government and public contributions. Government has allocated Civil Engineering division of the Sri Lanka Navy for construction and Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau (CECB) for consultancy and supervision. Sri Lanka Navy has already completed construction of the structure and are in the process of completing the finishes. The plan is to complete and handover the building by 2023 paving way to provide timely and appropriate treatment to children with heart diseases and critical illnesses in Sri Lanka.
Visit https://www.littlehearts.lk/ for more details.