A medical specialist has asked President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to order an immediate investigation into what he alleges is a move to procure a roughly 17-year-old linear accelerator for the Apeksha Cancer Hospital in Maharagama, rather than a current model, the Daily Mirror reported at 8.29 p.m. on Sunday.

The call came from Dr Chamal Sanjeewa, President of the Medical Professionals’ Alliance for Medical and Civil Rights. A linear accelerator, or LINAC, is the machine that delivers radiation treatment to cancer patients.

Sanjeewa alleged that modern equipment was available, but that efforts were being made — with the involvement of a biomedical engineering company — to procure the outdated model instead. The purchase is planned under an Asian Development Bank-funded programme to improve cancer treatment facilities in Sri Lanka.

He said the proposal raised the question of whether the decision was being shaped by personal interests connected to the supplier, and asked for an independent investigation of the procurement process.

A second machine, and the same company

Sanjeewa also asked for a review of the procurement and installation of a CT simulation machine recently acquired by the hospital, saying the same company’s role in that process should be examined.

He went further on why new equipment is not reaching patients, saying the introduction of modern equipment was meeting resistance from technical teams at the hospital, which was delaying installation. He urged the authorities to establish whether administrative or technical decisions were obstructing the adoption of advanced medical technology, and warned that procurement driven by personal relationships rather than patients’ needs could have serious consequences for cancer care.

Thousands of patients depend on the Maharagama hospital.

The Daily Mirror states plainly that the claims have not been independently verified and that the authorities and the company concerned should be given an opportunity to respond. This desk records them on the same basis: they are allegations by a professional association, not findings.

The archive supplies what the filing does not

Two things in this story are already on this desk’s record, and both change how the allegation reads.

The same doctor made the opposite complaint in August

On 25 August, Sanjeewa was the source for a story in which he said the linear accelerator purchase had been stalled for five years by a tug-of-war between officials and specialists, with funding from the ADB and the Treasury.

The complaint has now inverted: in August nothing was being bought; on Sunday the objection is to what is being bought. These are not contradictory — a procurement frozen for five years and then settled on an old machine is one coherent sequence, and it is the sequence Sanjeewa’s two statements describe. But no filing joins them, and nothing published says whether Sunday’s proposed purchase is the resolution of the five-year stall or a separate transaction.

There is already a competing explanation for the stalled CT simulator

The CT simulation machine Sanjeewa wants reviewed is not a new subject here. On 9 October this desk reported that around 1,500 patients awaiting radiation therapy faced delays because Apeksha’s new CT simulator could not be used — the Society of Government Radiological Technologists said the replacement machine, handed over the previous month, had software that would not communicate with the hospital’s treatment systems. On 12 October the Health Ministry said the matter was under review.

So there are now two accounts of why the same machine is not working. One is a technical incompatibility between the new simulator and existing systems. The other, Sanjeewa’s, is institutional resistance from technical teams delaying installation. They are not mutually exclusive, and neither account addresses the other. This desk records both and adopts neither.

Not reported

The filing does not name the biomedical engineering company, give the value of the procurement, or say what stage it has reached — whether a tender is open, evaluated or awarded.

It does not say what “around 17 years old” refers to. A 17-year-old model design supplied new and a 17-year-old used or refurbished unit are materially different purchases, and the distinction is the heart of the allegation. Nothing published establishes which is proposed, or on what document the age is based.

There is no response from the Health Ministry, the Apeksha Hospital administration, the ADB, or the company. Nothing says whether the President’s office has received the request or will act on it, and no procurement authority has commented.

This is a single-source story. A search of the other verified newsrooms found no independent account of Sanjeewa’s statement at the time of writing.