Paediatric wards close as more medical specialists leave the country
Due to Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, some 600-700 doctors have left the country in the past year, with at least 40 applications to emigrate currently filed every day. This is just the beginning, expert warn. Combined with the shortage of medical drugs, the national health sector risks paralysis.
Colombo (AsiaNews) – The paediatric ward of the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital has been closed after four paediatricians moved abroad, including its chief, as well as paediatric consultants attached to it. Now medical residents will no longer be able to train at the medical facility located in northern Sri Lanka.
In a letter last Wednesday, 29 March, the hospital’s director, Dr D.M.S. Samaraweera, gave instructions to refer paediatric patients to non-paediatric wards following the ward’s closure.
In it, he explains that he was forced to shut down the ward after all three consultant doctors went abroad. All three are affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine, Rajarata University.
At the Anuradhapura Teaching Hospital, more doctors are considering leaving as well, sources say.
This is part of a broader trend. Due to the country’s economic crisis, scores of Sri Lankan specialists are emigrating, threatening to paralyse its health services.
“At least 600 to 700 doctors, including specialists, have migrated during the last year,” said Dr Haritha Aluthge, secretary of the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA). “The Health Ministry receives a minimum of 40 migration applications from doctors, every month.”
This is not unexpected. The GMOA had issued repeated warnings that this would occur if the authorities imposed new taxes on professionals.
“The closure of a ward due to the departure of specialist doctors of a leading hospital in the country may be the first step towards a crisis,” said Dr Harsha Senanayake, a senior surgeon at a leading government hospital, speaking to AsiaNews.
“Currently, Mullaitivu Hospital’s paediatric ward is incapacitated as only one specialist doctor mans the unit, whereas, the surgical unit of the hospital has been shut down with no surgeons,” he added.
For Dr Sachini Tennakoon, an orthopaedic surgeon at a district hospital, “this is just the beginning of trouble in the health sector and the situation is bound to take a turn for the worse with other hospitals, too, having to downsize for want of doctors and other health professionals.”
“The health sector,” she explained, “has been plagued by numerous issues such as chronic drug shortage and if it deteriorates further due to the mass emigration of doctors, the ordinary people who pay to maintain them are wait-listed even for serious surgical procedures, whereas politicians are rich enough to pay for healthcare here or overseas.”
In Sri Lanka, “there are only 27 cardiothoracic surgeons,” but “only 18 consultants currently in five hospitals across the country,” noted Dr Ranga Nissanka, who works at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka. “With the irreparable harm to the state health sector due to a dearth of specialists, life-saving heart surgeries and maternal health will be crippled.”
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