Clusters or community and power play

Despite Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi continuing to maintain that the virus has not reached community spread, the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) says several infected patients are emerging from within the community and that they fear the community is unsafe. “Therefore, we should take measures to control the current situation to prevent a further spread of the virus in the community,” GMOA Secretary Dr. Haritha Aluthge said.   

The danger is that by living in denial, the health authorities may not be seeing the urgency of the situation and gearing themselves to stem the spread of the virus, which has now infected people in some 67 police divisions.   
Unlike an underworld criminal, who could be cornered in his hideout and shot dead in a crossfire; the coronavirus is not confined to any particular lair because it takes up residence, with little or no fanfare, in a vulnerable victim as and when it fancies doing so. As such, the strategies needed to confront or overcome this unseen enemy have to be medically well thought out, and the cooperation of all citizens enlisted with the truth being told of the actual ground situation.   

Be that as it may, the alarming news these days is that the COVID-19 pandemic is making vast inroads in the country, with active cases rising to 4,808 while the death toll has risen to 19 as at 10am on Wednesday, October 28.   

We conclude this part of our column with a weekend media report quoting the Sri Lanka Academy of Health Professionals (AHPSL) President Ravi Kumudesh as saying there was a lack of fact presentation or explanation about COVID-19 in community medicine terminology to prove that the virus is not at a community-spread level.   
“We are also faced with doubts as to how state intelligence mechanisms and military tactics are used to define whether or not the virus has reached the level of a cluster or community spread. However, because Sri Lanka still does not test for antibodies that are generated in an infected person who has recovered from COVID-19, it is not possible to obtain data on naturally cured infections,” Mr. Kumudesh said.   

He said even using state intelligence services, patients can be tracked down only by using the data provided through PCR test reports, and with such a tracking system, finding the origins of the disease or tracing the patient’s exposure history may turn up some cases to be negative while there might be a sporadic spread of the virus taking place in society.   

 “By repeatedly saying there is no community spread at present, there is a high probability that the situation will become extremely dangerous, with people turning their attention to the cluster that some authorities keep harping on and falling back to a relaxed safety policy based on their own general assumptions that are otherwise detrimental in taking some control on the spread of the disease,” Mr. Kumudesh said.    With that said, we highlight the fact that as much as the Government solicits the cooperation of the people it should also solicit inputs from the medical fraternity and put in place a scientifically proven medical strategy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, before it slips out of control and endangers the entire country.   

Meanwhile, in the wake of the passage of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, with a two-thirds majority in Parliament, we thought it opportune to carry an excerpt from a speech made on July 12, 1951 by former Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who was the then member of Attanagalla, soon after resigning his portfolios of Health and Local Government and crossing the floor of the House.   

He said: “The much quoted saying of Lord Acton regarding the corrupting influence of power, I have often thought, really means that power which should be a means to an end, the end of performing a valuable service to the people, soon tends to become an end in itself, when the original purpose is lost sight of and all that remains is the desire for the securing, the entrenchment and the extension of power in the hands of those who wield it.” Quoting Milton, he said, “Human ambition is the last infirmity of mortal man.”   

It will do well for President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to assure the people that the power bestowed on him through the 20th Amendment will in no way be misused or abused, but used for the greater good of all Sri Lankan citizens, whatever creed they profess or community they belong to.