A makeshift hospital serving Sri Lanka’s war zone is badly understaffed, running out of crucial medicines and overwhelmed by a flood of civilians wounded in intense fighting between the government and rebels, the top doctor there said.
Dr Thurairajah Varatharajah said the shrinking conflict zone — where aid groups say 200,000 civilians remain trapped — has been hit by unrelenting artillery fire and gunbattles over the past three to four weeks that are killing about 40 civilians and wounding 100 every day.
The government, on the brink of defeating the Tamil Tigers and ending the 25-year-old civil war, has denied targeting civilians, and the rebels have rejected such accusations as well. But scattered reports from aid workers, health officials and evacuees implicate both sides in the attacks.
Varatharajah, the government health officer for the Mullaittivu district, said on Friday that artillery was routinely hitting civilian areas in the region.
Confirmation of the reports was not available because independent journalists are barred from the war zone.
As the government broke through rebel defenses in recent weeks and surged forward, Varatharajah said he has repeatedly evacuated to shoddier facilities. He and his patients left the district hospital in Mullaittivu before the military overran that town on Jan. 25 and relocated to a small village hospital in Puthukkudiyiruppu.
But that hospital came under heavy shelling that killed at least 12 people, many of them patients. Last week, the staff and patients fled and set up a makeshift hospital in an abandoned school in the coastal town of Putumattalan.
That area was also shelled and 22 people were killed near the hospital on Monday, Varatharajah said.
The school had no reliable supply of drinking war, had only two toilets for hundreds of people and the facility was having trouble getting food, he told reporters by telephone.
The hospital had run out of penicillin and many other essential antibiotics and was facing a shortage of anesthetic as well, he said.
Only eight of the 30 doctors who normally work in the district remained, Varatharajah said, estimating that he needed at least 80 doctors to properly treat the wounded.
None of the remaining doctors are surgeons or anesthesiologists, but they were all performing emergency surgeries in an operating room they set up by throwing up a curtain and moving a table into a classroom, he said.
“We are always working,” he said, adding he performed an amputation and delivered a baby by Cesarean section on Friday morning.
Only three of the 20 nurses remained and as much as 90 percent of the rest of his staff stopped coming to work, he said.
“We are facing, in the hospital, big problems on all sides,” Varatharajah said.
With their limited facilities, the medical staff can’t treat major chest or head wounds, and most suffering those injuries die, he said. However, they have been able to treat most of the other wounded successfully, he said.
The Red Cross evacuated more than 600 patients and family members from the makeshift hospital by ferry this week, but with the fighting raging on, the hospital had 300 more wounded and another 200 patients suffering chronic disease in need of urgent evacuation, he said.
Many people were also suffering lung infections, fevers and coughs, probably from inhaling fumes and smoke from the incessant shelling, he said, coughing heavily as he spoke.
He did not say who he thought was firing the shells.
The artillery fire appeared to have stopped on Friday after the government declared a 12km coastal strip, that included the hospital, a “safe zone” and pledged not to attack it, he said.
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
‘CROSSING THE LINE’: China’s embassy in Seoul criticized US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson, asking if his ‘hostile’ remarks were authorized by Washington South Korea and the US are in talks over recent public remarks by the commander of US Forces Korea, Seoul’s presidential office said yesterday, after the comments drew sharp criticism from China. In a recent podcast interview, US Forces Korea Commander General Xavier Brunson described South Korea as “the dagger in the heart of Asia” from China’s east coast, prompting the Chinese embassy in Seoul to say that he had “truly crossed the line.” The interview came amid growing speculation that Washington might seek to expand the role of US Forces Korea in countering the growing regional influence of China, a key
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
Forecasters in Europe yesterday warned of exceptional heat as record temperatures driven by a “heat dome” push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent. The surge follows a record-breaking Monday, with France logging its hottest day in the month of May on record, its weather agency said, and the UK also posting unprecedented highs. A so-called “heat dome” of warm air from northern Africa trapped under a high-pressure system over western Europe is behind the high temperatures not usually seen until high summer. Restrictions on outdoor work were imposed in parts of Italy, beaches in southwest France filled earlier than usual and
RSS