Hospitals postpone routine surgeries to preserve medical equipment during emergency: GMOA

The Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) said it has come to a situation to postpone their routine surgeries to preserve those medical equipment for surgeries may have to be performed during emergency situations in the future.

Addressing the media, GMOA Secretary Dr. Haritha Aluthge said the remaining medical equipment and medicines have to be prioritized for life-saving surgeries such as heart surgery.

The shortages in anaesthesia drugs, related medical equipment, antibiotic shortages and medicines used to treat complex situations have caused the procrastination of routine medical operations, the doctor said.

"The hospitals have given dates for these routine operations six months in advance, and the patient is confident of the surgery will be performed on the given date."

However, with the current medicine and equipment shortage, it is unfortunate to say that hospitals have to turn the patients away without performing surgeries.

"It seems that we have travelled while mounting too much weight on the Indian credit line and we don't know the day it ends and the administrative details behind the program." Importing of cancer-prevention drugs has been allocated 40% of the budget. We don't know whether those imports were done while identifying the priority," he said.

That is why we requested a technical committee to discuss the issues. With the recent discussion with the health ministry officials, it was confirmed that there was an issue with the coordination. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)