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✅ Completed COVID-19 Response

Protecting Northern Sri Lanka's only teaching hospital from COVID-19

📍 Teaching Hospital Jaffna, Northern Province, Sri Lanka

✅ Project Value: $51,702 — Reached

A Rotary Global Grant equips Sri Lanka's Teaching Hospital Jaffna — the sole tertiary hospital for a province of 1.2 million people — with a transport ventilator, ICU monitoring and N95 masks to fight COVID-19.

Teaching Hospital Jaffna (THJ) is the only tertiary referral hospital serving all five districts of Sri Lanka's Northern Province — a catchment of more than 1.2 million people. With 1,236 beds, 21 ICU beds, 13 operating theatres and more than 1,500 staff, THJ treats close to 4,500 patients a day. When the Ministry of Health designated it a COVID-19 treatment centre, its ICU needed to be ready for a very different kind of patient load.

A director's request, a Rotary response

The request came directly from Rtn. Dr T Sathiyamoorthy, Director of Teaching Hospital Jaffna, who identified the equipment and protective supplies his ICU and frontline staff needed most urgently. Global Grant GG2001356 answered it: hosted by the Rotary Club of Colombo South (District 3220) and sponsored internationally by the Rotary Club of The Hills-Kellyville (District 9685), with the Rotary Club of Chatswood Sunrise and the Australian Medical AID Foundation (AMAF) joining as partners.

AMAF, an Australian-registered medical charity, brought clinical expertise and guidance to the project — continuing a partnership with the Rotary Club of The Hills-Kellyville that dates back to 2013.

What the grant delivered

Backed by US$51,702 in funding, the project supplied Teaching Hospital Jaffna with:

  • N95 masks to protect frontline medical staff
  • A transport ventilator
  • A multi-parameter patient monitor
  • A DVT compression pump, to help prevent blood clots in critically ill, immobile patients

Built to last beyond the pandemic

The hospital's own biomedical engineers took on ongoing maintenance of the new equipment, with local suppliers providing service and warranty support. As a public hospital, all treatment remains free to patients.

A partnership built on trust

Rotary Club of Colombo South served as host sponsor. Rotary Club of The Hills-Kellyville, as international sponsor, helped coordinate fundraising — including a matched contribution of US$17,010 raised through a RAWCS project from non-Rotarian donors. District Designated Funds from Districts 9600 and 9685, plus club cash contributions, rounded out the funding alongside The Rotary Foundation's World Fund match.

A note from Haran Ramachandran, International Sponsor: This project continues a relationship between our club and Teaching Hospital Jaffna that runs through our long partnership with the Australian Medical AID Foundation. Sponsoring it from Sydney, I valued being able to help a hospital serving over a million people get equipment its own director identified as most urgent.