The mission was carried out over ten years from 2011 until 2021 when the last of the objectives, the granting of a substantial donation of US$ 200,000 was pledged towards the procurement of a modern state of the art CT scanner with at least 128 slice capacity to augment the equipment in the radiology room of the A&E.

Fundraising was never easy but some large corporations in Sri Lanka and some very large individual donations got us across the line. We harnessed the knowledge and experience of several people in the Ministry of Health, the Batticaloa Hospital and in the industry to assist with problem solving and to overcome roadblocks.

We selected Gunaratna Associates Architects, by public tender. We were fortunate to have such a co-operative man in Dr. Locana Gunaratna and his wife Shanta as the architects for the project. Locana & Shanta translated our design needs into a workable plan which was accepta­ble to the bureaucracy.

The Ministry chose the Central Engineering & Consulting Bureau (CECB) to build the structure according to our plans. Although we encountered logistical and administrative issues along the way, the building was constructed to our specifications and completed in November 2018.

Special mention must be made of the Director of the hospital, Dr. M. S. Ibralebbe who used his knowledge and experience of the inner workings of the Ministry of Health to steer the project through the bureaucracy within which there were many sceptics and umpteen opponents of giving Batticaloa this modern A&E ahead of other hospitals in Sinhalese dominated areas of the country.