Patients undergoing eye surgery at Hambantota District General Hospital say lenses normally supplied free of charge are unavailable, leaving them to buy them privately at a cost of close to Rs. 40,000, the Daily Mirror reported.
The complaint has been raised by patients on social media rather than through the hospital or a trade union. They say the additional expense is a heavy financial burden on people who require eye surgery, and that arranging the lenses from outside suppliers has added to the difficulty of being treated at a state hospital.
Patients have urged the government to intervene urgently and ensure lenses are supplied to the Hambantota hospital and to other state hospitals where they are needed, saying timely action is necessary so that those seeking treatment in the public system are not left meeting substantial out-of-pocket costs for essential medical items.
What the report does not establish
This account rests entirely on patients’ social media posts. The filing quotes no patient by name, and carries no comment from the hospital administration, the Hambantota regional health authorities or the Ministry of Health. Nothing in it confirms the shortage officially.
It does not say how many patients have been affected, how long the shortage has run, whether surgery has been postponed as a result, or whether the hospital has advised patients to buy the lenses privately. It does not specify the type of lens involved — the report says “contact lenses” in the context of eye surgery, and does not clarify further.
It also does not say whether the shortage is local to Hambantota or part of a wider supply failure, which is the question that would determine whether this is a procurement problem or a distribution one.
A single-source report
No other verified newsroom reachable from this desk had filed on it at the time of writing. Hiru News and NewsFirst carried no corresponding report, and Ada Derana’s site has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for twenty-three consecutive days and could not be checked.
Context: the same complaint, in three hospitals, on one day
The filing is one of three published by the Daily Mirror on Monday in which patients or doctors describe paying privately for items the state system is meant to provide. The others concern the national cancer hospital at Maharagama, where a new CT simulator has left about 1,500 patients waiting for radiotherapy planning, and a doctors’ union claim that cancer patients are spending more than Rs. 100,000 a month on drugs unavailable in government hospitals.
These are different facilities and different supply items, and no filing links them. The common feature is the cost falling on the patient.
Source: Daily Mirror.
