When docs flout health guidelines

I went to the Osusala Agent (branch) at Thalawathugoda to buy some medicine for our dog specially because I was keen to obtain generic products obviating the need to pay through my nose for branded products. There was a notice very prominently displayed on the door that there should be no more than three customers inside at any given time. This was one of the rare places that still had a functioning water source to wash hands and a sanitizer dispenser too for those who preferred the latter. There were three customers already being served so I waited outside till one of them came out.

When it was my turn, I walked in and waited till a shop assistant (Pharmacist/Dispenser) was free to talk to. A couple of minutes into my being served two chaps walked in (now four inside, one more than the number allowed) and one of them tried to show something on his cell phone to the shop assistant. I told him “Son, I am still being served and you are not maintaining the one metre distance either”. He apologised and distanced himself. I was still being served and this chap accompanied by the other bloke approached the counter again when I reminded him that I was still being served. He then said “meka pana adina pilika ledekuta” backed up by the other man. The accomplice was a stout curly haired light tan complexioned chap who seemed self-important. He said, “I am a doctor”. I replied “I am a doctor too. That is why I am so particular about following health guidelines myself and am very concerned about those around who break them with the greatest impunity”. He apologised, didn’t he? What’s the point in apologising when he keeps repeating the same ‘mistake’? I am an MO at the NHSL, you may be a Consultant but don’t shout as he had apologised to you. Yes, I have been a Consultant in the Department of Health Services of Sri Lanka for 25 years. Apologising cannot prevent the spread of Covid, I said. The two barged to the counter from my left showed the phone to the pharmacist, asked if that drug was available and disappeared from the premises shouting derogatory remarks at me.

This doctor if he is one, needs to be disciplined by the SLMC for many reasons

1) He blatantly flouted the instructions given on the door of the pharmacy by coming in as the fourth person.

2) He and his friend openly and blatantly disregarded the health guidelines by almost abutting against me.

3) He tried to justify all the wrongdoing

4) He was helping the friend to find an anticancer drug for a patient, who in their own words “pana adinawa” (NO ANTICANCER DRUG CAN BE ADMINISTERED TO A GASPING PATIENT)

5) It is most likely that the drug they were looking for was not an anticancer drug at all but said so to justify their wrongdoing.

Gone are the days when doctors were treated as demigods and quite rightly so as well. These are people who gain admission to the Med school with 50 or 60 marks less but from Timbuktu. For them it is like winning a lottery. These people have no empathy. They disown their own ranks after ascending the social ladder. They do sweet nothing in the hospital marking time till 4.00p.m. to make a B-line to their private practice to squeeze the sap out of the helpless and the hapless. Most of these people even do not have the necessary basic knowledge to practice as a doctor. In a country where people don doctorates brewed in the backyards of China and call themselves ‘Acharya’ what more can you expect? Over to you Mr. President, Sri Lanka Medical Council.

Dr. M .M. Janapriya