Thieves of lives
Editorial-October 25, 2013,
No crime or sin could be worse than robbing a dying person of his medicine, doubly more so when the victim happens to be a child. This exactly is what the local agents of a drug company and some pharmacists have done at the Cancer Hospital, Maharagama. They have stolen several phials of an expensive drug manufactured in the US—each costing about Rs. 237,000—administered to cancer patients, especially children, and resold them to the hospital through the same supplier. The cost of this life-saving drug is borne by the taxpaying public struggling to make ends meet. What the greedy rogues have done amounts to a serious crime which must be treated as such.
We are as shocked and dismayed as we were when we saw on TV some human vultures relieve a female victim of the Boxing Day tsunami of her gold chain and leave her on the shore. The thieves of cancer drugs must be having their own children. How they brought themselves to commit that theft defies comprehension. Are they drug addicts desperate for money to fund the habit? They surely have a special place reserved for them in hell!
President of the Lanka Private Bus Owners' Association Gemunu Wijeratne once lashed out at errant bus crews notorious for their callous disregard for passenger safety; he called them 'thirisannu' or animals because they did not care much about human lives. This description fits the aforesaid pharmacists and their accomplices better, we reckon. However, it may be wrong for us to use such analogies in that most animals even risk their lives to protect their offspring unlike the two-legged 'thirisannu' who steal children's life-saving drugs.
The media has exposed several rackets at the Maharagama Cancer Hospital during the past few years; they have aggravated hapless patients’ suffering, endangered their lives and cost taxpayers dear. It is heartening that the Health Ministry has begun to take stern action against the culprits.
Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena and his top officials, including Health Secretary Dr. Nihal Jayathilake, deserve praise for having evinced a keen interest in tackling pharmaceutical rackets in the state sector. The rogue pharmacists have been interdicted; the company concerned blacklisted while steps are being taken to recover the loss from the culprits. The case has been handed over to the CID for further investigations. These are certainly welcome measures but much more needs to be done.
The cancer drug racketeers cannot be unaware of the agony of not only terminally ill patients but also their near and dear ones. Temples, other places of worship and welfare centres near the Maharagama Cancer Hospital are overflowing with the cancer-stricken poor and their family members and relatives who come from faraway places. Those unfortunate people spend weeks, if not months, there undergoing hell while their loved ones are suffering and dying in the nearby hospital.
Drugs are the proverbial straw they clutch at out of sheer desperation. The government, in spite of all their failings, incurs a lot of expenditure on anti-cancer drugs and philanthropists have come forward to provide funds and care. But, unfortunately, there are some heartless scumbags who have no compunction about lining their pockets at the expense of poor patients.
Opinion is divided on the capital punishment on moral, ethical, political and religious grounds. But, we believe that even the ardent opponents of the death penalty, which they consider an anachronism in the modern world, would not oppose the thieves of children's cancer drugs being hanged—in public. One cannot think of a better way to deal with such crimes.
