Priyantha Kumarasinghe starts his day in the small Sri Lankan town of Maharagama with a breakfast of two biscuits and a small glass of tea, followed by a round of cancer medicines.
The 32-year-old vegetable farmer was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021 and started receiving treatment earlier this year just as Sri Lanka’s economy went into free-fall.
Amid crippling fuel scarcity and weeks of unrest, Kumarasinghe said he was unable to travel the 96 miles between his home and Sri Lanka’s main cancer hospital on the outskirts of the country’s largest city, Colombo, for treatment.
Priyantha Kumarasinghe has his head massaged by a relative at his aunt’s home in Homagama
(Reuters)
He dips biscuits into his tea as they are easy for him to swallow with a painful throat
(Reuters)
“If I had been able to get treatment properly during June, July and August there is a good possibility I could have reduced the lung cancer,” he told Reuters. “Because that was not possible that may be the reason why the cancer has grown.”
Kumarasinghe is among hundreds of cancer patients who have had their treatment upended by Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.
Hospitals countrywide have struggled to contend with severe drug shortages, which have worsened over the last eight months, a representative of Sri Lanka’s largest doctors union told Reuters.
Kumarasinghe eats food donated by a temple at a communal kitchen in a cancer care transit home near Apeksha Hospital
(Reuters)
“All hospitals are experiencing shortages. There is difficulty in even sourcing basics like paracetamol, vitamin C and saline for outpatient services,” said Vasan Ratnasingam, a spokesperson for the Government Medical Officers’ Association.
Specialist facilities like cancer and eye hospitals are running on donations, Ratnasingam said. Sri Lanka’s health ministry and senior health officials did not respond to calls from Reuters.
A medical worker talks to a vendor selling household goods and food for patients and their family members, outside Apeksha Hospital
(Reuters)
Battered by the loss of tourism and remittance earnings because of the pandemic, alongside an ill-timed tax cut, Sri Lanka slid into crisis in early 2022 after its foreign exchange reserves dried up, leaving it short of dollars to pay for fuel, food, cooking gas and…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at The Independent Travel…