By Ravi Perera –

Ravi Perera

Before the government hospitals stood thousands of patients, incomprehension written on their tired weather beaten faces. Mostly middle aged or older, the medical treatment and the procedures they needed, and had travelled distances to receive, were not available. Although there was no clear explanation, no public notice, no person of authority to speak to, the word was that the doctors administering the medicine were on strike island wide. As it happens often in this country, the system had suddenly collapsed.

The reason for the strike became known only the next day, in the media. A female doctor serving in a provincial hospital had been sexually assaulted by a criminal, in her own quarters. Outraged, the doctor’s union decided on collective punishment of the entire community, withdrawing their services at government hospitals throughout the country, an action that can impact only the economically disadvantaged. The private hospitals remained open.

An outsider would be perplexed by the logic of the strike. This type of collective action of a trade union is associated by and large with employment issues, matters to be ironed out with the employer. A strike action is a tactic only resorted to when negotiations have not yielded results. It will be hard to convince the outsider that an isolated sexual attack on one of its members (by a criminal) constitutes grounds for union action, unless it was related to their employment in some way, there is a pattern to such incidents, and was in the employers’ power to prevent.

In any other country, the doctors would have decided to unite with the State in its search for the perpetrator, an effort which becomes more effective if supported by the public. The State (the police) in this case not only arrested the criminal, but also some of his family members.

For a Sri Lankan versed in the ways of its culture, no explanation is needed, unions here are tribalistic, often responding irrationally, flexing their muscles unexpectedly; make no mistake about their power. The profession may be a calling in the climes where the medical profession originated, a commitment to a selfless life of service. Here too, they take the Hippocratic oath, but we must grovel before them, do not forget their power to withdraw their services at a whim!

The overblown Sri Lankan narration defeats itself; the political leaders, doctors, judges, teachers, technicians, in fact most adults are praised in such terms that the poor ranking of the country in these respective fields internationally, becomes meaningless. If the narration is even partially true, our services should be world class. The truth is, those who can afford it, prefer doctors in Singapore or teachers in Australia. All those Sri Lankans shrewd enough to understand the meaning of a better life, carry a second passport.

Going by the common recitation, we do not have professional men acting reasonably. What we have are demigods, men elevated to near divine status, for doing what they are paid to do. Doctors are gods who cure with their hands, while judges are equated with gods who sit in judgment with divine insight (not mere mortals deciding between two sets of arguments, based on the evidence).

Western medicine, as well as their legal systems, evolved empirically, based on secular thought processes.  An unworldly culture has interpreted a foreign intellectual achievement to suit its more obscure instincts, putting demigods in charge of the process. All this hocus-pocus has not brought results, the country lurches from one crisis to another, sinking deeper into a moral abyss. Before every foreign embassy stands thousands of young men and women eager to leave a land described by the narration as one in the hands of celestial replicates.

Unquestionably, the medical profession is blessed in this country; there may be good doctors and bad doctors, but there are no poor doctors.

This sudden prosperity in a sea of want, can distort perception as well as assessment of self. If you make money, you must amount to something!

Not so long ago, the doctor’s union got involved in national politics, supporting one particular candidate for presidency. He won. It is rumoured the doctors then became policy advisers, even venturing into organic fertilizer; in an agricultural country such as Sri Lanka, fertilizer is a fundamental issue. Little knowledge can be dangerous, especially if the person ventures into an area outside of his competence, without heed to the many complexities thereof. This dabbling had severe consequences, the country went into an unprecedented crisis, eventually forcing the sitting President to make an undignified exit.

When good men do nothing, evil can triumph. It is in the nature of Sri Lankan union politics to discourage the more wholesome, paving the way for undesirable know it all’s; respected professions thus come to be dominated by men with different agendas, eventually betraying the profession’s essence.

This is not to say that the entire medical profession is cranky, an organised exploitation of a helpless public. I have met absolutely committed doctors, refined men of stature and integrity, but they are not the union official types.

Observing the anomaly between them and those who run the union what strikes the eye is their wide cultural gap. Evidently, the mere passing of the medical examinations is insufficient to make a true healer.

This probably is the fundamental drawback in nearly all professions in our country today.

There is a huge gap between requisite personality and what our institutions of higher learning produce.

Mind that gap!