Priyantha Kumarasinghe starts his day in the small Sri Lankan town of Maharagama with a breakfast of two biscuits and a small glass of tea, followed by a round of anti-cancer drugs.
The 32-year-old vegetable farmer was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2021 and began treatment earlier this year just as Sri Lanka’s economy was in free fall.
Amid crippling fuel shortages and weeks of unrest, Kumarasinghe said he was unable to travel the 155 km (96 miles) between his home and Sri Lanka’s main cancer hospital, on the outskirts of the country’s largest city, Colombo, for treatment.
Kumarasinghe is among hundreds of cancer patients whose treatment has been turned upside down by Sri Lanka’s worst economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.
Hospitals across the country are grappling with serious medicine shortages, which have worsened over the past eight months, a representative from Sri Lanka’s main doctors’ union said.
“All hospitals have bottlenecks. It is even difficult to obtain basic necessities such as paracetamol, vitamin C and saline for outpatient services,” said Vasan Ratnasingam, a spokesman for the Government Medical Officers’ Association.
Specialty facilities like cancer and eye clinics are run on donations, Ratnasingam said.
Battered by the loss of tourism and remittance income due to the pandemic, Sri Lanka, along with an ill-timed tax cut, found itself in a crisis in early 2022 after its foreign exchange reserves dried up and it lacked dollars to pay for fuel imports. Food, cooking gas and medicines.
For months, the country of 22 million people faced hour-long power outages and severe fuel shortages.
The economic hardship sparked protests that led to the ousting of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in July.
Currency devaluation and record inflation have left middle-class families like Kumarasinghe’s on the abyss as they struggle to meet the higher cost of living.
For decades, the people of Sri Lanka have benefited from a universal public health system that subsidizes treatment, including medicines, for serious illnesses.
However, services have been hampered by dollar shortages, which have restricted the import of medicines and the public funds available to hospitals to provide care.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe has promised to restore economic stability but warns reforms will be painful as the country looks to hike taxes to put its public finances in order and with creditors including India, Japan and China, is working together to restructure the debt.
In September, the country struck a tentative agreement with the International Monetary Fund for a $2.9 billion bailout, but it must bring its huge debt burden onto a sustainable path before disbursements can begin.
The economic hardship remains overwhelming for many.
Sathiyaraj Silaksana, 27, is visiting her five-year-old son S. Saksan, who has leukemia and is traveling 350 km (217 miles) with her husband to feed him.
“Due to the current crisis in Sri Lanka, we are facing major transportation and food problems,” said Silaksana, who is pregnant with her second child.
“I have no choice but to pay for my son’s needs. My husband is a construction worker. To pay for all these expenses, we pawned our jewelry.”
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