Sri Lanka’s health sector is in dire straits as a result of medical practitioners leaving the Island seeking greener pastures abroad.
The British Medical Journal (BMJ), one of the leading medical publications coming out of the United Kingdom has revealed that around 1500 medical practitioners, including high profile specialists, departed from Sri Lanka seeking job opportunities in foreign countries between 2022 and 2024.
The journal has mentioned that the medical practitioners leaving Sri Lanka has resulted in a financial loss of approximately Rs. 12.5 billion to the country.
Medical practitioners from Sri Lanka mostly travel to Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand.
The exodus of medical personnel which began during Sri Lanka’s civil strife, has accelerated in recent times with the economic situation worsening in the country. This loss of healthcare personnel has also affected the academic sectors in the medical faculties in the country.
In several hospitals, the Out Patients Department (OPD) remains without medical practitioners and the hospitals in the rural areas have been very much affected without proper facilities.
Post-independence, Sri Lanka’s medical studies were considered among the best in Asia. Apart from the students entering the medical faculties in the island, those who failed to enter even gained scholarships in foreign countries to follow their post-graduate medical studies.
As far as Tamil medical practitioners serving in the North and East Provinces are concerned, they migrated to foreign countries citing the difficult situation in the two provinces when they got the opportunities to follow post-graduate studies abroad.
There were incidents of medical practitioners and medical students faced with intimidations and death threats when the North and East civil war was in progress. When Sri Lankan Tamils started gaining political asylum in developed countries, professionals such as medical practitioners had significant opportunities to gain asylum as well as job opportunities in the countries they opted for.
The present Minister of Health Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa is now on a fact-finding mission throughout the country, looking into the state of the Government hospitals. He has even travelled to the North and East Provinces where the health sector has faced severe problems.
According to the British Medical Journal’s recent report, Sri Lanka’s healthcare workforce comprises around 23,000 medical professionals, including 2,800 specialists. The departure of such a significant number of doctors has placed an added strain on an already burdened healthcare system.
It has also been confirmed that, by 2024, the number of Sri Lankan doctors who have migrated to the United Kingdom and joined its healthcare system has increased by 120% compared to 2019.
In the meantime, several private hospitals have come up in a big way in the country. While health services in the state sector provides free medication to all citizens in the island, medical services are provided at exorbitant rates at the private hospitals, and it is only the affluent who enjoy the privileges provided by these private institutions.
There are incidents of medical practitioners serving in state facilities practicing at the private hospitals too, and encouraging patients to go to the private hospitals where they practice. Recently some accusations surfaced against medical practitioners requesting patients to buy their medicines at the pharmacies they interact with.
Critics of the medical sector claim the present state of the health sector has not gone to dogs. Rather, the dogs have entered the medical sectors with no respect for the medical ethics.
