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Mulleriyawa Hospital Director explains situation in Unit 2
They need love and care
The biggest problem we have is that no one comes to take the discharged patients home, says Mulleriyawa Teaching Hospital Director Dr. Ruwan Marasinghe under whom comes Unit 2 housing mentally ill women.
Last week, The Sunday Times highlighted the conditions at Unit 2, where though the wards and patients are clean, there is much overcrowding and some patients are tied up.

The patients are practically abandoned. No one comes to see them. They are here 30-40 years, says Dr. Marasinghe, appealing to the community to show more care and concern for the mentally-ill. “We will look after them. But it will be good if their relatives visit them and feed them a bun or a banana,” he says. Daily, the hospital sends out telegrams to relatives.

With regard to patients being “restrained”, Dr. Marasinghe says the hospital staff has no option but to do so for the good of the patients themselves. “They fall off their beds. Those in bar-beds don’t realize that the bars should be removed but simply try to jump down and can get injured. Some bite or try to harm the other patients and a few if not restrained attempt to eat their faeces.”

Commending the staff of Unit 2 which has about 900 patients, he says though it is understaffed they are doing a good job. “The doctors do normal ward rounds though there are only eight doctors for both Unit 1 (with 175 patients) and 2. I am very strict about patient care,” he says adding that there are only “rare deaths and no patients with bed sores”.

A system change must come with community awareness because when the patients overcome their mental illness and become normal they should go home, explains Dr. Marasinghe dubbing Unit 2 the “discharge unit”.

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