Only State Health sector gets bad press - Minister

Nadira Gunatilleke

Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said there are a large number of complaints against private sector health institutions. Addressing a ceremony held at the National Blood Bank, Narahenpita yesterday, Minister De Silva said despite this nothing comes out to the public and no media reports anything adverse about such incidents happening in the private sector.

"There are a lot of problems in the charges, quality and accuracy of blood tests carried out by small laboratories mushroomed around state hospitals.

Sri Lanka imports 8000 varieties of drugs. The State Pharmaceutical Corporation (SPC) and private pharmacies sell these drugs to the public.

Both State and private sector purchase drugs from same foreign companies and 50 percent of the Sri Lankan patients obtain medical treatment from the private sector. But injections go wrong only in the state sector and pieces of glass, weevils and dirt appear only in the injection vials used in the state sector," he said.

According to Minister De Silva the number of malaria cases were over 400,000 by the time he took over the office of Healthcare and Nutrition Minister and now it is only around 400. The number of TB patients were 200,000 and now it has been reduced to 10,000 patients. Several diseases such as Polio and leprosy have already been totally eradicated.

There is no country in the world where no citizen survives from an epidemic.

But no one wants to admit it and are only trying to take political advantage using the situation," he said.

The Minister said Canada has stopped the vaccine used against (A)H1N1 because there were adverse reactions for around 20 persons but no publicity was given in Sri Lanka for this incident.