Difference between life and death

Wednesday, 31 October 2012 00:02 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

SRI LANKA’S health sector is an ever-bubbling cauldron. Last week doctors held a one-day token strike, while another set of issues was taken up by the nurses on Tuesday.

According to the unions, the Government, despite its ramblings over abolishing the 13th Amendment, has gone ahead and allowed Provincial Councils to recruit 75 per cent of the nurses needed for their regions independently, while the remaining 25 per cent will be drafted by the Central Government.

Unions are up in arms over the new policy and have added it to their already existing list of grievances over salary allowances, reducing the working week to five days and obtaining the same phone privileges as those given to doctors.

During a Satyagraha protest yesterday, the Government Nursing Officers’ Association (GNOA) insisted that the Finance Ministry was treading water on their salary issues and made the usual threat of an all-out strike. However, what is most of concern is the latest plan to allow nurses to be recruited by the Provincial Councils, which could contravene the national recruitment standard for nurses.

One of the main concerns is that there will be political interference. While political influence prevails in the current system as well, there is an acceptance that it would less than in the periphery. Given the politicisation of the teacher recruiting system as well as other provincial level public positions that are commonly handed over during every election campaign, this seems a valid concern.

There is little argument over the fact that Government-sponsored recruitment drives often attract the most un-ambitious section of local graduates who are then trained and dispatched to provinces where they have to face even more politicisation. It is also no secret that many of them select the path of least resistance in dealing with political interference, most often electing to toe the line and make a tidy income through tuition, rather than bucking the system.

There is also the second concern that pushed by vested interests the Provincial Councils will not look too closely at educational qualifications and the standard of training that they obtain. This is literally a matter of life or death since nurses are expected to be highly trained. Despite all the issues that have cropped up in the health sector, Sri Lanka is credited with having a good system in place, often attracting interns from other countries as a result, and deviating from the decades-old training system would surely be dangerous.

Without any monitoring mechanism in place, nurses can be hired on different qualifications and trained haphazardly, resulting in innocent patients having to pay for their incompetence with their lives. Moreover, as the existing imbalances in the nursing sector have proved, hiring individuals on different qualifications will only add to the existing complications over pay grades. Since the Government has a policy to transfer nurses around the country, this will be a widespread issue if not handled carefully.

Sri Lanka’s cumbersome health sector is both a blessing and a curse, but that does not mean neither the Government nor other stakeholders can give up on it. The public as its most important participant needs to push the envelope on Government decisions because the result could be the difference between life and death.