By Dilanthi Jayamanne
Over 70 doctors who were given appointments last month have already left the country without informing the Health Ministry. Quoting Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena the Ministry spokesman said yesterday that many leave Sri Lanka after obtaining the five year MBBS medical degree at the tax payers expense.
The spokesman said foreign countries benefited from their expertise and service while the government and people who paid for their education were the losers.
Last year Minister Sirisena appealed to 10,000 Sri Lankan doctors serving in United Kingdom, Australia and USA to return to serve the country as the war had ended.
Additional Secretary Government Medical Officers’ Association (GMOA) Dr. Sankalpa Marasinghe said that 72 doctors who left the country were those who had received post internship appointments and decided against taking up positions or those who had not applied for post intern appointments at all. He said they were among the 800 medical officers who were given post intern appointments last month. They left the country without doing their internships.
Dr. Marasinghe said the GMOA had unofficial information that approximately 60 MBBS qualified medical officers had left the country without doing their internship the previous year.
A majority leave the country due to the lack of facilities to work in the peripheries and concerns over schooling of their children. Recently the GMOA held discussions with the President regarding the issues faced by medical officers. One of them being, schooling facilities for their children. The GMOA appealed to the President to provide 280 seats in country wide schools so that their children and they themselves would not be faced with the dilemma of finding schools or being separated from their families owing to the issue, he said.
Doctors are transferred every four years and thereby are unable to provide the school with a permanent address.
Dr. Marasinghe also cautioned the government that it would be faced with another crisis in the future when MBBS doctors opt to do their internship and post internship in private hospitals rather than face the issues of serving in government hospitals.
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