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.