Crisis-hit Sri Lanka nearly out of medicine, doctors warn

Sri Lankan physicians warned on Sunday that life-saving drugs were running scarce and that the island nation’s economic woes were threatening to kill more people than the coronavirus outbreak.

Weeks of power outages and acute shortages of food, fuel, and pharmaceuticals have wreaked havoc on Sri Lanka, which is experiencing its worst economic depression since 1948.

According to the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA), all hospitals in the nation now lack access to imported medical equipment and essential pharmaceuticals.

Several facilities have already suspended routine surgeries since last month because they were dangerously low on anesthetics, but the SLMA said that even emergency procedures may not be possible very soon.

“We are made to make very difficult choices. We have to decide who gets treatment and who will not,” the group said Sunday, after releasing a letter they had sent President Gotabaya Rajapaksa days earlier to warn him of the situation.

“If supplies are not restored within days, the casualties will be far worse than from the pandemic.”

Mounting public anger over the crisis has seen large protests calling for Rajapaksa’s resignation.

Thousands of people braved heavy rains to keep up a demonstration outside the leader’s seafront office in the capital Colombo for a second day.

Business leaders joined calls for the president to step down on Saturday and said the island’s chronic fuel shortages had seen their operations hemorrhage cash.

Rajapaksa’s government is seeking an IMF bailout to help extricate Sri Lanka from the crisis, which has seen skyrocketing food prices and the local currency collapse in value by a third in the past month.

Officials from the Finance Ministry have said that while Colombo works to restructure its debt, sovereign bondholders and other creditors may have to take a hit.

On Friday, Ali Sabry, the island’s new finance minister, told parliament that the IMF will provide $3 billion in support for the island’s balance of payments over the next three years.

Sri Lanka is struggling to service its $51 billion foreign debt due to a serious lack of foreign money, with the pandemic jeopardizing essential revenue from tourism and remittances.

Government mismanagement, years of accumulated debt, and ill-advised tax cuts, according to economists, have aggravated Sri Lanka’s dilemma.