A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
(Full Story)
Search This Blog
Back to 500BC.
==========================
Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, June 18, 2017
While There’s Life, There’s Hope
Having been castigated for being a prophet of doom and gloom insofar as
the future of the Resplendent Isle is concerned, being subjected to
recurring abuse accompanying the allegation that I am simply a
“disgruntled victim of the great Hector Kobbekaduwa’s Land reform” etc. etc., it gives me a bit of satisfaction to document a ray of hope in the murk that is Sri Lanka today.
As
someone who underwent the travails resulting from a Specialist’s
“outsourcing” of what was allegedly a “less-than-surgical procedure” in a
premier teaching hospital, no less, it gladdened my heart to hear that
the milk of human kindness has not dried up in every medical institution in this country.
To cut to the chase, I had, drawn to my attention, the case of someone who had displayed
the early symptoms of the current scourge of Sri Lanka – dengue fever.
Consultation with a specialist physician resulted in warding at the
Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) on the outskirts of Colombo.
This
appears to be a more than pleasant surprise after the charnel house
that passes for a Teaching Hospital and those who conduct its affairs in
the hill capital.
Initial
admission was into a ward packed to the rafters (almost literally!)
with other dengue sufferers and resulted in periodic bed-sharing
episodes. This sacrifice in comfort and privacy was unavoidable in the
hospital’s effort to deal with a crisis situation with totally
inadequate resources.
The
cleanliness of the ward left little to be desired, the toilets and
bathrooms were clean and the showers had water pressure that would have
been the envy of most Colombo homes!
I’d
like to believe that, even in a system that is so critically
under-funded and where our so-called leaders don’t hesitate, at the drop
of a hat, to take off for places such as Singapore and the United
States at the first suspicion of serious illness, there are still some
medical practitioners to whom the Hippocratic Oath is more important
than money in the bank or the next world cruise funded by some
multi-national drug giant.
As
someone who was at death’s door for nearly a week thanks to the
botching of what was supposed to be a “simple non-surgical procedure,”
thanks to medical “outsourcing” and who on several mornings woke up in a
bath of urine, thanks to the fact that the staff ignored requests to
leave a urinal within reach of one whose thoracic cavity housed a
stainless steel “heart repair kit” which wouldn’t brook anything
resembling a twist of the upper body, it certainly gladdened this heart
to see what appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel of death and
despondency that is Sri Lankan medical treatment today.
I
have gone to great lengths to document my own experience because it is
in such direct contrast to what seem to be the conditions prevailing at
the Infectious Diseases Hospital, operating under the additional stress
of this country being in the throes of an unprecedented outbreak of a
mosquito-borne disease the treatment of which is still very much in the
exploratory/development phase.