Medical physicists expected to sit on the committees evaluating bids for cancer radiation machines attended a promotional event run by a company linked to one of the bidders nine days before the tenders were due to open, a consultant physician has alleged.
Dr Chamal Sanjeewa has called for an independent investigation into the procurement of Linear Accelerator (Linac) machines for the Apeksha Cancer Hospital in Maharagama and the Galle National Hospital, the Daily Mirror reported on Thursday afternoon. The purchase is funded through an Asian Development Bank loan scheme.
The sequence he describes
According to the account Sanjeewa has put forward:
- The Government Medical Physicists’ Association (GMPA) held its Annual General Meeting at the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo on 14 June 2026.
- An international representative of the company manufacturing the radiation equipment in question delivered a promotional presentation at that meeting. The event was sponsored by the company’s local agent.
- Tenders for the Apeksha and Galle machines were scheduled to open on 23 June — nine days later.
- Medical physicists expected to serve on the Technical Evaluation Committees (TECs) for those same tenders were among those who attended.
Sanjeewa said procurement guidelines, including those applying to ADB-funded projects, require strict controls on contact between bidders and the officials evaluating their bids, and that this contact could affect the independence and fairness of the process.
What he is asking for
He has asked the Health Ministry to open an independent investigation into the 14 June meeting and to establish whether procurement rules were broken.
He has also asked that the medical physicists who attended be removed from the relevant Technical Evaluation Committees until the allegations are examined.
He warned that leaving the alleged conflicts unaddressed could lead to legal disputes and further delays in buying the machines, putting patients waiting for treatment at greater risk.
The 17-year-old machine claim returns
Sanjeewa has again questioned the proposed purchase of a Linac model around 17 years old, warning that Sri Lanka could end up with outdated cancer treatment equipment.
That is the allegation he first made publicly on 18 October, when he asked President Anura Kumara Dissanayake to order an immediate investigation into a bid to buy a roughly 17-year-old linear accelerator for Apeksha. Thursday’s filing adds a mechanism to that earlier complaint — it is the first account to allege how an outdated model might come to be selected.
It also adds a second hospital. The October reporting concerned Apeksha alone; the procurement described on Thursday covers Apeksha and Galle National Hospital together.
A procurement that has been stuck for years
The Linac purchase has a long record on this desk. In August, Sanjeewa was the source for a report that the procurement had been stalled for five years by a dispute between officials and specialists, with ADB and Treasury funding available. In October, around 1,500 patients awaiting radiation therapy faced delays because a new CT simulator at Apeksha could not be used.
Read in sequence, his three statements describe one continuous problem rather than three separate ones: a purchase frozen for years, then an objection to the model chosen, and now an objection to how the choice is being made.
These are allegations, not findings
The Daily Mirror presents this as information put forward by Dr Sanjeewa. This desk records it on the same basis.
No response from the Health Ministry, the GMPA, the ADB, the manufacturer or its local agent appears in the filing, and nothing published establishes that any rule was in fact broken. Attending a professional association’s AGM at which a supplier presents is not by itself a breach of procurement rules; whether it becomes one depends on the specific ADB and government provisions in force and on who actually sat on the committees — none of which is established by the report.
Not reported
The filing does not name the manufacturer, the local agent, or any of the physicists said to have attended. It does not say how many TEC members were present at the AGM, or whether the committees had been formally constituted by 14 June — which matters, because a conflict rule binds an appointed evaluator differently from a physicist who was merely expected to be appointed.
It does not give the value of the procurement, say whether the 23 June opening went ahead, or state what stage the tender has now reached more than four months later. It does not say whether the Health Ministry has received the request or responded to it, and it does not explain what the “17-year-old” figure refers to — a model design still sold new, or a used unit — a distinction this desk flagged as unresolved in October and which remains unresolved.
This is a single-source story. A search of the other verified newsrooms found no independent account of these allegations at the time of writing, which matches the October statement, also carried by the Daily Mirror alone.
