Editorial - National Hospital Mayhem: Shame, Shame, Shame.
31 May 2013 06:30 pm
In a front page report headlined ‘Hippocratic or hypocritical?’ highlighted the shocking and scandalous case of what happened at the country’s premier medical centre, the Sri Lanka National Hospital. A courageous and civic conscious lady lawyer, Selyna D. Peiris had seen a girl, later found to be a trainee nurse, being tossed out of a private bus on Havelock Road. While the police dealt with the bus crew the lady lawyer carried the injured girl into her car and rushed her to the National Hospital. But what happened there is just one of a million symptoms of moral, ethical and spiritual decay in Sri Lanka.
Ms. Peiris said some of the staff at the hospital acted in a callous if not hard hearted manner with Florence Nightingale probably turning in her grave. They told her to wheel out a stretcher, put the patient on it and take her to the accident ward. Ms. Peirisdid so with difficulty with the patient vomiting blood, while nurses, attendants and even doctors at the accident ward were watching a teledrama.
Ms. Peiris said, “After painfully having managed to get her an x-ray, we had to run around the ward to convince the doctor that this patient was actually worth having a look at. Finally, after about 2 hours of mayhem, she was admitted to the ward and we were praying that she had no major injuries. The shock and disgust I felt at this time affected me to the very core of my being. I was appalled at the treatment which ordinary citizens face in times of greatest need and ashamed that I was too privileged never to have experienced this before. This is the sad reality of this so called Island in Paradise. I am ashamed today to live in a country with such blatant disregard for human life. The compassion and loving kindness so inherent to our culture is now merely folklore. There are many young people willing to take a stand for reforms….”
Sri Lanka’s public health service has a budgetary allocation of about Rs. 90 billion this year. We have more than 600 public hospitals, 400 medical clinics, more than 15,000 doctors, 30,000 nurses and tens of thousands of paramedical staff. With all these financial, human and technological resources, shameful negligence such as what happened on Tuesday night, takes place largely due to the lack of state regulation and monitoring. The public health service needs urgent structural changes like the National Medicinal Drugs Policy (NMDP), a patient’s charter of rights and responsibilities, a constitutional amendment to make health a fundamental right and a National Health Policy.
We hope the Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena will act fast to rectify these structural injustices.