At the time of writing this piece, government doctors have decided to put off their trade union action planned for today due to a multiplicity of the interventions and the crisis brought about as a result of the fast spreading dengue epidemic. The GMOA had held a discussion with Higher Education Minister Lakshman Kiriella, which the doctors have described as encouraging and is hopeful of a positive outcome in the coming days with the President also scheduled to make a public announcement. The doctors had also met the Asgiriya prelate and was scheduled to have an audience with the Archbishop of Colombo His Eminence Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith last evening According to GMOA Secretary Dr. Haritha Aluthge, several senior government ministers too had made contact with members of the GMOA and dissuaded them from going ahead with the strike with the promise of a workable solution to the SAITM issue.
The GMOA however will resume trade union action after one week if attempts were made to go back on the undertakings reached vis a vis SAITM or if the Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne makes provocative statements, Dr. Aluthge said at a media briefing summoned last evening to announce the temporary suspension of the strike.
The doctors last week came out with all guns blazing suggesting, this time around, they really mean business. The decision to take a step backwards from the drastic action planned should be welcomed by all given the plight the patients would have been pushed into, especially in view of the emergency situation brought about by the dengue crisis.
GMOA Assistant Secretary Dr. Naveen De Zoysa had already assured that they would take measures to minimize the impact on patients and the TU action would not cripple the treatment of dengue patients. This gesture too should be appreciated given the tone and tenor of the warning earlier that this time around their strike would be a no holds barred one and would be carried out in all its intensity, with one doctor warning that they would even pull out from emergency services.
Dengue patients, as is well known, largely comprise the poor, who are exposed to squalid conditions and pollution in the underbelly of the city and the suburbs. These folk invariably have no option but to seek treatment at government hospitals.
According to our reports there were 71,298 persons infected with dengue up to last month this year and the numbers keep on increasing. Then there is the case of those who come for treatment for fever, in the ordinary course, that shows signs of developing into dengue, but are turned away at government hospitals due to the GMOA strike? This callous action would have resulted in a patient with a dengue risk catching the epidemic that may have resulted in his or her death? There is no doubt that the doctors’ decision to stay their strike action was influenced by the plight of the dengue patients more than any other factor given the public outcry this would have raised. It was clear that whatever public sympathy that the doctors had attracted for their campaign was beginning to wear thin as the strikes began to multiply.
Be that as it may, it is gratifying indeed that saner counsel had prevailed and the doctors have decided to put their strike action on the back burner, at least for the time being. But a solution needs to be found to the SAITM issue and both sides must compromise. The GMOA should not stick to its entrenched position but display a degree of flexibility on the matter. After all it is the future of medical students, on both sides of the divide, that is at stake. The government already made a concession to nationalize the Dr. Neville Fernando Teaching Hospital and allowed the Sri Lanka Medical College to lay down the prescribed standards for the medical degree. Likewise the doctors to should strive to come half way down the road from their rigid stand.
The GMOA should also be seen to be independent of any political alliances that are against the government if it is to win public sympathy with its campaigns. It is all too plain that a majority of the agitating medical undergraduates are being manipulated by certain political forces whose one objective is to bring down the government. It should also desist from aligning itself with campaigns and issues that has no relevance to the medical profession such as the ECTA. The GMOA membership should also do some soul searching and ask themselves why they did not go hell for leather, as they do now, against SAITM, which was Mahinda's baby, in the past. Why has it also turned a blind eye to the private medical facility at the Kotalawala Defence Academy, set up at the instance of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa? It is such duplicity that has created a strong impression in the public mind that powerful political forces that are presently out of power are bankrolling the whole anti-SAITM agitation.
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