Depleted hospitals depend on Sri Lankan expats to fly in drugs

As Sri Lanka’s worst financial disaster in a long time took root, prompting medical shortages and halting surgical procedures, Kavindya Thennakoon knew she needed to do one thing. Before boarding a flight from San Francisco to Colombo, the Stanford graduate and co-founder of a digital training app posted on social media and requested these working low on provides to get in contact.

More than 50 requests later, Thennakoon packed three suitcases final month with 60 kilograms of over-the-counter gadgets for a hospital that had run out of fundamentals, together with surgical masks, glucose strips and dietary supplements for brand spanking new moms. The most distressing requests have been those who she couldn’t legally fulfill, comparable to most cancers remedy and injectable medicine for untimely infants.

“Hearing from these complete strangers — begging and saying, ‘I’m going to run out of supplies in a week or two days’ — was very heartbreaking,” stated Thennakoon, 27, a Sri Lankan who lives in California. “And to realise the country has come to that was even a worse feeling.”

For weeks, Sri Lanka’s once-lauded public well being system, free to its 22 million individuals, has come to a close to standstill. As the nation’s financial meltdown drags on, surgical procedures are being postponed and hours-long energy cuts have pressured docs to function by torchlight. With Sri Lanka’s funds battered by the worst inflation in Asia and diminished foreign-currency reserves, hospitals, clinics and pharmacies are struggling to obtain life-saving medicine and medical gear.

Without drastic measures, medical teams warn that import disruptions might result in hundreds of deaths. Public anger on the authorities is reaching a fever pitch: Sri Lankans have swarmed the streets of Colombo, the capital, protesting the dearth of drugs and different items, and demanding the resignation of embattled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. To ease shortages, Sri Lanka’s diaspora is now flying in provides to sufferers and docs, although Thennakoon stated these gestures have been nonetheless little greater than a “band aid.”

Last month, the federal government warned of dwindling provides of greater than 100 medical gadgets. Many are topic to cost controls that haven’t stored tempo with the native foreign money’s current devaluations, making importers reluctant to ship in pharmaceutical items at a loss.

Pharmacists prepare drugs for sufferers at Colombo South Teaching Hospital on May 2. (Bloomberg)

Channa Jayasumana, Sri Lanka’s well being minister, informed Parliament that some drugs might stay out of inventory for so long as three months. He stated strains of credit score wanted to buy drugs ought to have been opened in January, however they have been solely secured in April.

Currently, about 140 kinds of drugs are broadly out of inventory. That determine might rise to 250 within the coming days, based on Ravi Kumudesh, president of the Academy of Health Professionals, a neighborhood union. “I have never seen this kind of situation in Sri Lanka,” he stated.

Jayasumana and the nation’s former well being minister, Keheliya Rambukwella, who stepped down in April, didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Improvising options

Some Sri Lankans have devised workarounds to bridge the deficits.

Nisal Periyapperuma, 26, the co-founder of Watchdog, a Sri Lankan organisation arrange in 2019 to counter misinformation, stated he was infuriated with the federal government’s sluggish response to assembly shortages. The disaster was introduced into sharper focus in early April, he stated, when his father suffered a coronary heart assault.

“I’m kind of terrified,” Periyapperuma stated. “Can we get the next set of drugs?”

Watchdog lately launched an internet database referred to as Elixir that collates and coordinates medical requests from hospitals, the federal government and different donors. At the highest of the record are greater than 17 million sodium valproate tablets wanted to deal with epilepsy and bipolar dysfunction, together with chemotherapy medicine and anaesthetic.

Still, coordinating home inventory is just one piece of the issue. Sri Lanka imports about 85% of its medical provides and wishes arduous money to convey them into the nation.

“We don’t have enough foreign currency to actually clear these orders,” Periyapperuma stated. “If you go to a pharmacy and try to buy something simple, like paracetamol, it’s a bit difficult. Very basic medical supplies are missing because most of these are not produced here.”

A preventable disaster

The scarcities imply that round half of all surgical procedures — principally routine operations — have been postponed in Sri Lanka, based on Rukshan Bellana, president of the Government Medical Officers’ Forum, a union representing about 2,000 docs.

His group blamed the federal government for not appearing months in the past to safe emergency provides from neighbouring nations like India, which is among the fundamental suppliers of prescription drugs to Sri Lanka. With gas shortages, many well being care employees can’t even get to work, he added.

Drugs bins positioned on the desk in a medicines concern counter at Colombo South Teaching Hospital on May 02, 2022 in Colombo, Sri Lanka. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images) 

“It could have been prevented,” Bellana stated in an interview on the Colombo South Teaching Hospital, the place sufferers snaked across the entrance one current morning. “You may not have drugs, you may not have the doctor’s staff — but the patients keep coming.”

In the quick time period, Sri Lanka might get some aid. President Rajapaksa introduced final week that the World Bank will present $600 million in monetary help, partly so the nation should purchase extra medicine. The authorities has additionally lately signed a $1 billion credit score line with India, which pledged to ship medical items to the island quickly.

But even with these infusions, Sri Lanka faces shortages of single-use gadgets comparable to intravenous strains, catheters and chemical diagnostic reagents, based on Bellana. And with lengthy lead occasions to obtain medical merchandise from abroad, many clinics and hospitals predict a chronic wait.

In northern Sri Lanka, the place ethnic Tamil separatists waged a 26-year civil warfare, workers on the Teaching Hospital Jaffna are anxiously consulting worldwide well being organisations about depleted shares of round 70 medical gadgets. With solely a couple of month’s provide left of anaesthetic, the hospital has postponed all surgical procedures besides maternity and emergency operations.

Even throughout the warfare, which resulted in 2009, “we didn’t have this crisis,” stated C. Jamnunanantha, 53, a health care provider and deputy director on the hospital.

“We don’t know how long we can do it,” he added.