COLOMBO: Perinatal Society of Sri Lanka has made a desperate appeal to the Sri Lankans living in and outside the island to save new born babies in hospitals.
The president of the society Dr L P S Saman Kunara said in a letter : “Kind request for your assistance to save new-born babies in Sri Lanka at this critical situation As you may be aware, Sri Lanka has been maintaining an outstanding neonatal mortality rate in the South East Asian region.
We are proud about our neonatal care in our country and we manage babies from 23 weeks up and most of our neonatologists were trained in the UK, Australia and we are really grateful to the UK and Australian governments for providing the training opportunities for our trainees.
The country is unfortunately going through an extremely difficult time economically as well as politically. It’s very sad to note that most of the essential consumables are not available in hospitals.
I, as the first neonatologist and the president of the Perinatal Society of Sri Lanka, decided to explore the ways of at least temporally sorting out some issues. One major and extremely critical issue we are facing in neonatal care is, lack of ET tubes.
We have almost used all the stocks and no ET tubes will be available in few weeks. I have instructed not to discard used ET tubes but to clean and sterilize them from now onwards as we may have to reuse them as a desperate solution, though we hate to do so.
My humble request for you is to look for the possibility of sending some ET tubes, neonatal ventilator circuits (Fisher and paykel) or any other useful consumable item. I have attached a list of items which are essential and will be soon out of stocks in Sri Lanka.
I hope the country’s situation would be under control by 2023 but we need the above quantity for this year. I would be very grateful to you if you could consider my request and help us save lives. Let me thank you in advance for your kindness extended towards sick babies in Sri Lanka.”
