Extremely inhumane seeing patients wait 3.5 years to get an angiogram done at KNH Dr. Hansaka Wijemuni

Kandy District candidate of the Jathika Jana Balavegaya, Dr. Hansaka Wijemuni said that there is a waiting list of about 7,000 patients for angiogram tests at the Kandy National Hospital (KNH) and for one of these patients to get a bypass surgery done it takes at least seven years.

He also said that of his 25 years in service he has worked in the heart diseases unit for 18 years and that the queues of persons waiting to obtain a date for surgery is extremely inhumane compared to gas and fuel queues.

Expressing his views further at a media meeting held at the Oak Ray Hotel in Kandy, Dr.Wijemuni said that the right for a person who is sick to receive treatment is a fundamental right.

“However, in my professional life, I have seen how much a person pleads and fights and struggles to obtain treatment when they are sick. People have to wait in line for 3 1/2 years to get an angiogram done after suffering from a heart attack. Hopefully the patient is alive until the test is done”.

“If you have to do a bypass after that test, you have to wait for another three and a half years. 7,000 people are waiting in line at Kandy National Hospital for an angiogram test. If an angiogram is done and a bypass has also to be done, a patient has to wait for about seven years”, he said.

He added that these queues are extremely scary and inhumane. All this time the patients are at high risk and in grave danger. When the people in these queues get angiogram tests, the doctors in the bypass surgery wards call their homes over the phone and tell them to carry out some further tests and come as the surgery will be done next week. Then from the other side, the patient’s daughter or son calls and says that the father had died and even the first-year’s alms giving had also been given. This is a story that is heard many a time. These queues are more horrible than the oil and gas queues.

If one has money an angiogram and bypass surgery can be done at a private hospital within a week. This is a State that deprived the people of the right of easy access to health. Those who wanted to live have also had to die because of the short-sighted actions taken by the previous governments. The achievements of science should be human achievements. But in our country, the achievements of science have become the achievements of companies. Ministers come to government hospitals for an opening ceremony and not for treatment. This situation must change.

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