Reconciliation through healthcare
The
transformation of the Northern landscape is continuing apace. We
saw giant strides taken in linking the North- South by the
opening of the A9 route, progress in the education sphere and
the reopening of hitherto abandoned Northern livelihoods.In yet
another instance showing the gradual integration process, some
40,000 children housed at IDP centres are to be immunized for
various diseases.
The children are to be inoculated against afflictions such as
polio, tetanus and Japanese encephalitis. The three day program
which was to commence yesterday is supported by UNICEF and WHO.
This is a clear indication that the Health Ministry has begun
in earnest to attend to those facets of the Healthcare system
that were thwarted due to the raging conflict. Although the
Government endeavoured to provide all health facilities during
the conflict, there is no denying that its efforts were stymied,
mostly due to the lack of access to these facilities due to
restricted freedom of movement and also the LTTE appropriating
most of the medicines and facilities meant for the civilian
population.
It is most appropriate that children have been given priority
under this project since the future of the community now rests
on the health and well-being of the next generation of youth now
free of the shackles of terrorism.
As mentioned, although the Government maintained an
uninterrupted health service in the North during the height of
the conflict it was severely handicapped in providing
supplementary services such as immunization programs and
personnel attention due to the prevailing situation. Of course
providing medical supplies and personnel alone would not
guarantee a proper healthcare in the absence of a proper
curative health program and backup services.
Now the Health Minister would have to start from scratch to
build this broken link of the health service in the North and it
is gratifying to note that he has identified the most urgent
need of preserving what remains of the health and well-being of
the children of the North who as mentioned earlier will have to
play the most important role to rebuild this battered community.
It is in this light that an article carried in the British
Medical Journal titled “Sri Lanka; Health as a weapon of war” is
to be condemned. The article seeks to portray a scenario whereby
successive Governments had used access to medicine as a weapon
of war against the LTTE.
This article has been vehemently countered by our High
Commissioner in London who said “the Government hospital system
operated unabated in every part of Sri Lanka throughout
including the areas controlled by the LTTE. The Regional
Directors of Health Services in the North and East of Sri Lanka
ensured that each hospital and government dispensary functioned
properly.
The Government provided medicine, staff and funding for the
continuation of the system to operate as usual. Even on one
occasion when a prominent LTTE member known as Daya Master
suffered a heart attack, he was air lifted by the Government
helicopters from the LTTE controlled areas and taken for
treatment to Colombo. Therefore, the allegation that the
Government used medicine as a weapon of war does not arise and
is a cynical misinformation of reality”.
This is hardly surprising. Wasn’t it the selfsame British
Media who reported that conditions obtaining in IDP centres
resembled those of a concentration camp. If so it may well be a
new definition of a concentration camp where its inmates are
provided with all medical facilities including an immunization
program for 40,000 children.
It is with the same cynicism that the British Media heaped
calumny on the Government Security Forces during the tail end of
the war with little or no blame apportioned to the LTTE who were
holding 300,000 innocent civilians as human shields.
The authenticity of its reports was in the end unravelled
when the doctors in No Fire Zone who fed them bogus casualty
figures confessed they did so under duress. So much for the
British media.
We are certain that the Health Ministry would proceed in
providing all the health needs and care to the people of the
North with redoubled efforts now that the single obstruction of
giving them unhindered access to these facilities is no more. As
Minister also of Nutrition we hope Minister Nimal Siripala de
Silva will start a nutrition program as that operated in the
South for pregnant mothers and children, in these IDP centres,
in this continuing process of integration. |