Letters to the Editor
View(s):Is it not a national disaster when terminally ill patients don’t have drugs?
The impact of the news had both the doctors and the patients shaken. Do we have the right to ask or do we go down on our knees and pray to the divinity?
Doctors were distressed as they had to disappoint their patients who rely on them. They had no alternative but to tell them the pharmacy had no stocks, so come on another day.
There were well over 600 patients that clinic day at the OPD section alone on the 1st and 2nd floors of the hospital. They had come from all over the country. The writer got number 94 in the blood test queue having arrived at 7 a.m. Others had stayed overnight in temporary abodes to join the queue earlier.
Three hours later the blood report in hand, already worn out, we stayed attentive to names being called to enter the clinic. The attendants, nurses and doctors are compassionate. Their patience and understanding are amazing. Four doctors per unit in three small connected rooms see patients. The doctors are already armed with individual patient files from the record room. It is very organised. The rooms hardly have space to move with 12-15 patients at any given time. They all have different stages of cancer. That particular day was for the adult category thus limiting the crowd.
Shortage of medicinal drugs for the terminally ill is a national disaster. Why does the Ministry of National Disaster Management remain inactive? Is air lifting medicines for hospitals impossible? Can our national carrier SriLankan Airlines transport medicines at all for an emergency? After all it is absorbing all the losses that are reported in the media.
Does the Health Ministry consider human suffering as not part of its concerns? Is remedial action not impossible? Given the compassion and generosity of the ordinary people of Sri Lanka it is indeed possible. The Government authorities should act immediately to bring down the medicines and restore the supply at this hospital. They should simply make urgent arrangements to import the medicines on priority basis. They could then make a public appeal to the private sector businesses and the wealthy to generously foot the bill, which they will happily do.
The next step would be to admonish those employees who failed to maintain the proper stock level. This appears like a serious administrative lapse by the management. In April 2018 too there were press reports of a similar shortage.
Cancer patient Via email
Machines and robots may well be a boon for the UN
As a person who worked at the UN in the 70s and 80s with no modern technology (no PCs, cell phones, emails, etc.), I was delighted to read the Sunday Times article which pointed out that the UN “is steadily zooming into the field of fast-paced, cutting-edge digital technology where humans may one day be replaced with machines and robots”. A former Secretary-General (SG) once said that SG really stands for scape goat (since all of the world’s political problems were piled up on him). Perhaps in 50 years time the UN be headed by a mechanical robot who will not be answerable even to the Security Council and remain blameless?
In last week’s article, the author, Thalif Deen, a long-time (Sri Lankan) journalist at the UN wrote “The United Nations says it has also been using unarmed and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, in peacekeeping operations …”
The same author who scathingly exposed the sex scandals among UN’s Peace-keepers around the world, in his 4.11.18 Sunday Times article titled “108 Lankan soldiers in Haiti sex scandal” apparently forgot to mention that it would be advantageous for the UN — both economically and physically — to deploy sex robots in the UN’s Peace-Keeping Operations.
I am sure high tech machines and robots can also save a lot of money in the long run.
The UN should immediately invest in a few hundred sex robots, currently being manufactured by China and Japan, (now used in more than 12 countries and regions all over the world) and fly them to UN’s Peace-keeping forces:
1) To help the UN from facing rape & sex allegations at those stations;
2) To prevent UN peacekeepers from contracting STD – even HIV/AIDS;
3) To prevent human sex trafficking – mostly minors (a UN goal);
If properly managed, the UN can recover the costs within a few months – even make it profitable.
By the way, those countries that manufacture sex robots may even donate them cost-free to the UN– development aid in a novel format.
A win-win situation for all.
Somar Wijayadasa Via email