Administration report of the Director of Health Services / [Ceylon].

  • Ceylon. Department of Health
Date:
[1957]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Administration report of the Director of Health Services / [Ceylon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with no place to go to or no relatives to receive them. This move on the part of the Department of Social Services will release almost 10 per cent, of the beds now occupied by the aged in Government hospitals. Every hospital has a number of chronic sick on its hands as well. The proper care of bedfast patients with long-term illnesses is sufficiently complex and varied to require a wide range of services. Because of this the Department of Health Services has recommended that buildings avail¬ able at Horahena, recently evacuated by the Navy, be utilized for the purpose of housing the chronically ill. In planning this service it has to be kept in mind that a large portion of such are indigent. This proposal was before the Ministries of Health and Social Services at the end of the year and was receiving consideration. Except for the original diagnostic study and for acute exacerbations the general hospitals are neither the best nor the most economical places to care for long-term illness. The cases of this kind are rheumatism, heart diseases, hernia, haemorroids, varicose veins, high blood pressure, chronic bronchitis, asthma, nephritis, diabetes, chronic skin diseases, &c. These require no skilled nursing ‘service but only medical supervision and personnel for rehabilitation. The necessity for convalescent homes in association with all large general hospitals for those recovering from acute illness has«been accepted. The first of such homes was constructed for reception of patients from the General Hospital, Colombo, and put into use at Talagolla with accommodation for 94 patients at the end of the year. There was a public demand to regulate the fees charged by Private Nursing Homes. The Department, with the help of the Private Nursing Homes Advisory Committee, framed draft regulations to control the fees charged by these Nursing Homes and submitted them to the Ministry for necessary action. It is difficult for private nursing homes to provide even the minimum standards without charging rates that are so high that few in the middle class can meet with equanimity. No country however socialistic can ignore that the practice of medicine has been and should continue to be a part and parcel of the competitive system of free enterprise. The physician must be encouraged to give his patients the best possible care dictated by his knowledge and conscience, not exclusively by the rules of a state medical service. The people must be encouraged to provide for themselves in their illness too, their own hospitals on modern methods of business and industrial management so that when they are patients in them they will feel that they are not just ward cases but/ individuals. The Government’s free hospital service is also becoming an expensive annual budgetary provision quite out of keeping with the national income of this country and its population growth. In the face of these hard facts hope of progress in the years to come must depend upon the strengthening of the hands of the private practitioner and the co-operative medical relief movement to treat more patients at home, where most people prefer to be or in non-state Hospitals. Government took the policy decision in 1957 of giving monetary aid to co-operative societies formed for the medical care of the sick. No decision has been taken as yet as to the form or method of assistance the private practitioner should receive for shouldering the responsibility for the sick in a welfare state. Both the co-operative movement and the private practitioner need from government the service of consultants for help and advice and much more comprehensive arrangements for X’ray and pathological investigations than are available at present for them to give a complete and competent service. Under the present circumstances their patients are being admitted to the Government hospitals merely for investigation and “ check up ”. It is a costly process which should be the exception rather than the rule.
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