Medical equipment including CT scanners and MRI scanners have been lying idle in State hospitals due to the Health Ministry’s inability to renew the service contracts with the respective suppliers by paying pending bills, Trade Unions (TUs) attached to the health sector have alleged.
The TUs allege that the ministry has failed to take any positive steps to expedite the repair of the medical equipment.
“Bills worth millions of rupees are piling up at the Health Ministry. Scores of equipment are taken off operation daily due to delays in repairing. Even when the hospitals inform relevant suppliers, they refuse to come, claiming that their agreements have not been renewed. Patients are suffering. This delay also adds an additional pressure to the existing machines that are still in operation. If the delay continues, those machines are also at risk,” All Ceylon Nurses’ Union (ACNU) President S.B. Mediwatta charged.
He told The Sunday Morning that patients were forced to wait in queues for a CT scan or an MRI because only a few machines, amongst the existing machines available at hospitals, were operating at present.
“Patients are suffering. Sometimes the same patient has to come several times. We are trying to perform as many scans as possible, but there is a limit one machine can handle. Sometimes the machines overheat and we have to stop. This is a real issue but authorities are turning a blind eye,” Mediwatta stressed.
Highlighting the importance of performing scans in a timely manner as instructed by doctors, he said that patients had to wait for days in order to obtain scans which their doctors had instructed for them to take on a particular day.
“There is a serious threat to the patient. The lives of these patients are at risk but we don’t see anything happening from the ministry level. We are informing them because it has to be rectified by them. We are getting blamed by the patients as well. When things get delayed, they blame us, but the truth is we have nothing to do with it. Our nurses are trying their level best to handle the situation, but it’s becoming more difficult by the day,” Mediwatta stressed.
Failure to pay
Addressing the delay in repairing medical equipment at hospitals, All Ceylon Medical Officers’ Association (ACMOA) Secretary Dr. Jayantha Bandara alleged that the ministry had failed to honour the payments worth millions of rupees on time and to renew agreements.
“These service agreements are costly and the ministry, at some point, had spent millions of rupees to purchase this equipment through middlemen. We have costly agreements to renew because of the bad decisions taken by the ministry officials. They have to take responsibility for this crisis. If investigated properly, those who have obtained commissions and bribes when handling the purchasing of these machines at higher costs will be revealed to the public,” Dr. Bandara stressed.
Dr. Bandara said that at present (7), around 15 such machines out of 25 were out of order.
He went on to explain that as per the internationally accepted norm, there should be around eight CT scan machines per one million of the population, but that Sri Lanka’s population of 22 million only had 25 CT scanners and around 10 MRI scanners in the State sector.
Dr. Bandara argued that the machines should be handled by the Government’s Biomedical Engineering Services (BMES) Division, which should import machines to the country and undertake repairs and maintenance, avoiding the expenditure of massive sums of money for service contracts awarded to third parties.
Corruption and mismanagement
Highlighting the shortages of reagents required by the machines, Association of Health Professionals (AHP) President Ravi Kumudesh stressed that the entire health sector was mired in corruption and mismanagement.
“Every process is corrupt. There are good processes, but the officials use those to delay the process in order to earn commissions. This is the reason why we have many delays in importing medicine and medical equipment. This has to be stopped. There should be simplified processes and centralised institutions to handle everything. The bargaining power should not be handed over to third parties,” Kumudesh said.
Highlighting the current shortages, Kumudesh said despite stocks coming in periodically, the entire sector was suffering from a severe shortage of medicines.
“One medicine is available on one day, but is unavailable on the next. This is not sustainable and we cannot continue in this manner. Most tests have now come to a standstill due to a shortage of relevant reagents,” he said.
When contacted by The Sunday Morning, Medical Supplies Division (MSD) DirectorDirector H.M.K. Wickramanayake said all medical equipment was handled by the BMES, while the reagents were handled by the MSD.
“A mA majority of these items are machine-specific. The relevant hospitals have to purchase these machine-specific items. We are managing the common itemsWe are managing with regard to the , but the main concern is about the machine-specific items,” he stressed, ,adding that due to the financial crisis, there was a massive debt to be paid and that suppliers would not return until the pending amounts had been paid, .
However, Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said the shortages would be rectified and the necessary arrangements would be taken once the Treasury released the necessary finances.
He told The Sunday Morning that the Treasury had agreed to provide nearly Rs. 65 billion until the end of this year and that the existing shortages would be resolved once the funds received,had been received.