Sri Lanka's desperate hunt for drugs, while doctors warn of catastrophic deaths in the economic crisis

When Prasadi Perera, 39, received a kidney transplant three years ago, she believed that she had been given a second life.

Now, in the middle of the worst economic crisis in the independent history of Sri Lanka, it is one of thousands of patients with a chronic illness who are facing an increasingly uncertain future.

Ms. Perera has to take eight and seven tablets in the morning to stay healthy, but in the past three months the state hospitals and pharmacies in Colombo have assumed the life -saving medication they need.

She was forced to travel to the city of Negombo over 50 kilometers to try and buy medication, including Prednisolon and Tacrolimus. But often she returns home with empty hands.

"There were also days when we couldn't find any medication at all, my mother went to pharmacy in Colombo and in the surrounding cities of pharmacy. The pharmacists say that the medication is simply not available and the government is unable to buy enough for everyone now," said Ms. Perera.

"When I miss my medication, I get back pain and pain when urinating. I am afraid of the future as the country develops."

Sri Lanka's health system is about to collapse, while the country continues to get into the economic crisis, with leading doctors warning that the nation could record more deaths due to the lack of the lack of civil war.

A spokesman for the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA), the leading public health authority of the country, told the Telegraph that the country's hospitals have already assumed five life -saving drugs. There is also a critical deficiency with at least 180 other drugs - including cancer medication and insulin - as well as vaccines, including rabies.

Medical devices and reactive means for hospital tests are also scarce, and ten -hour power outages mean that doctors in some hospitals have to carry out operations at flashlight lights.

"The lack of life -saving drugs mainly affects cardiac patients, we are faced with a critical situation. We assumed, for example, Tenecteplase, which must be administered to the patient within 24 hours after a heart attack, otherwise they die," said Dr. Vasan Ratausingam, the spokesman for the Gmoa.

"There are also bottlenecks for many cancer medication and those for chronic diseases such as kidney or liver diseases."

"I know so many people from"

Last week the GMOA in Sri Lanka proclaimed a public health emergency after a patient died of a heart attack when he could not be given a Tenecteplase due to bottlenecks.

In a second confirmed incident, a 70-year-old woman died in a suburb of Colombo on a septic shock in a suburb of Colombo after the nearby hospitals had assumed the albumin, a protein that was injected to treat a low blood volume.

It is assumed that there have been more deaths due to the shortage of medication, but Sri Lanka's hospitals are facing the pressure of the country's authoritarian government to keep information secret.

The country is in the worst economic crisis in the world. Groat economic mismanagement means that it owes the lenders over £ 21 billion, but only has £ 1.7 billion on foreign currency. Sri Lanka simply cannot afford to import important drugs from abroad while lacking local manufacturers.

In all of Colombo, the doctors are still determined to provide the best possible health care, but anger and frustration grow that they do not have the means to do their work, and their requests come to the government.

When the Telegraph visited a pharmacy outside of Colombo's largest state cancer, the APEKSHA hospital last week, the pharmacist, who did not want to be mentioned for fear of reprisals, said that the facility had ended with many important cancer medication.

"I have to reject so many people and don't know what happens to them," said the pharmacist.

She added that they are concerned about the quality of the remaining medication, since in their business due to the inability of the Srilankian government to import fuel, ten -hour power failures can be caught every day, so that medication could not be stored properly at cold temperatures.

"We will see avoidable deaths"

Hospitals would also have to stop the emergency treatment within a few weeks due to the lack of equipment, warned the Sri Lankan Medical Association (SLMA), the oldest medical association in the country, on April 7 in a letter to the Sri Lanka government.

"This will lead to a catastrophic number of deaths that probably exceeds the total number of deaths of Covid-19. [The] tsunami and civil war," says the letter from the Slma.

Over 16,000 people have died during pandemic so far, there have been around 31,000 deaths during the tsunamis, while the United Nations according to estimates over 100,000 people died during the country's devastating civil war.

Several large hospitals in Sri Lanka have already hired insignificant operations, including the Karapitiya teaching hospital in the southwestern city of Galle and the Peradeniya teaching hospital in downtown Kandy.

A spokesman for the Association of Medical Specialist (AMS), a union that represents over three quarters of the surgeon of the country's surgeons, told the Telegraph that hospitals all over a lack of endotrachealt tubes were worried about the lungs of newborns.

A further 40 articles were not in stock in a large state hospital in the south of Colombo, as can be seen from documents that were preserved by preserved reuters including urethral catheter, umbilical cord clamps and glucose test strips.

"We will definitely see avoidable deaths among seriously ill patients if we do not reverse the current great scarcity of medication, surgical medication and anesthetics," adds Ravi Kumudesh, one of the leading health activists Sri Lankas.

In order to combat the medical deficiency, the GMOA has to appeal to Sri Lanker living abroad, in countries such as the United Kingdom and Australia, to send medical care and equipment. It is said that the Srilankian government did not respond to its emergency calls.

On April 4, the entire Srilankian cabinet with the exception of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda, the prime minister, resigned because the country was covered by nationwide protests against inflation that has reached the highest rates in Asia.

On Saturday, the country's new finance minister said that his first priority would be to stabilize the supply of the country with vital goods.

Mr. Sabry said Sri Lanka would be in arrears with his international debts and use his remaining foreign exchange reserves to buy medication and food in the coming months.

Several Srilankic media houses have reported since then that the World Bank has agreed to provide an emergency fund of £ 7.6 million so that Colombo can buy important medicines.

"The World Bank is deeply concerned about the economic situation in Sri Lanka and the effects on people. We are working to provide emergency aid for poor and endangered households to help them survive the economic crisis," said a spokesman for the World Bank.

On Thursday, Mahinda Rajapaksa said that he was ready to meet with demonstrators and to get involved who have brought the country to a standstill in the past two weeks.

patience is in short supply, since the prices of many vegetables have risen five times since last year and the costs for rice, a staple food, have risen by 30 percent - partly due to bottlenecks caused by a sudden decision by the Rajapaksa's chemical fertilizers last May.

All over Sri Lanka, many families of the middle and lower class report that they can only afford one or two meals a day due to the increasing food prices. The country is also confronted with a critical lack of fuel, since drivers are forced to stand in line for hours in order to buy supplies at very excessive prices.

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