Kandy General Hospital

Teaching Hospital Kandy
Teaching Hospital Kandy
Geography
Location	LK
Organisation
Hospital type	Teaching
Network	Department of Health Services
Services
Emergency department	YES
Beds	2291

Teaching Hospital Kandy, in Kandy, is the second largest Hospital in Sri Lanka.Bed strength of the hospital was 2291, as of 2011.

The fall of Kandyan Kingdom in 1815, lead to establishment of Western (English) Medicine and initiation of Hospitals throughout the Island. Dr. John Davy was an army surgeon and physician to Governor Sir Robert Brownrigg from 1817 to 1819. He came to Kandy with the British Troops and lived next to Diyawadana Nilame’s resident in Malabar Street.(At present it is named as Anagarika Dharmapala Mawatha).

A Military Hospital was built in a renovated existing building and was located at the site of the present “Kandyan Art Association”. Later it served both military and civilians especially for Cholera and Small pox.

After 1821 Indian labourers came to Sri Lanka for coffee and later tea enterprises. Civil hospitals were needed due to poor nutrition, cholera and Malaria.

Once the civil medical department was separated from the military service, Colonial Surgeons were appointed to Central Province. This medical Board appointed vaccination officers who were responsible for vaccinating the public against small pox.

In around 1861 there was an infectious disease hospital in Deyyannewela (the small pox hospital). This pauper hospital was later expanded to become the General Hospital Kandy. One of the very first buildings of the Kandy Hospital was the Cholera ward in 1866. It was located at the site of the current laundry in between the kitchen and the old KSM building.

Teaching Hospital Kandy with strong links to the University of Peradeniya, conducts undergraduate training programmes for the university students studying at the Medicine and Postgraduate Institute of Medicine(PGIM) which is a national institute attached to the University of Colombo. PGIM appoints post-graduate trainees, registras and senior registrars to this hospital on a regular basis as this is one of the oldest Hospitals which provides the entire range of medical and surgical specialties under the administration of a single institution. Teaching Hospital Kandy is a training centre for the student Nurses who are coming from the Nurses Training School in the Hospital.It also provides teaching facilities for foreign Students who seek exposure on Tropical Diseases.

Kandy Hospital is the second largest medical institution in the Island established and administered under the purview of the Ministry of Health Care and Nutrition, Sri Lanka which is a tertiary care institution maintained by the Sri Lankan Government.