'Don't fall ill': Sri Lanka doctors warn of drug shortage

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Don’t fall ill or get into accidents: That’s the advice doctors in Sri Lanka are giving patients as the country's economic crisis leaves its health care system short of drugs and other vital supplies.

The South Asian island nation lacks the money to pay for basic imports like fuel and food, and medicine is also running out. Such troubles threaten to undo its huge gains in public health in recent decades.

Some doctors have turned to social media to try to get donations of supplies or the funds to buy them. They’re also urging Sri Lankans living overseas to help out. So far there’s no sign of an end to the crisis that has thrust the country into an economic and political meltdown.

That means 15-year-old Hasini Wasana might not get the medicine she needs to protect her transplanted kidney. Diagnosed with a kidney ailment as a toddler, she got a transplant nine months ago and needs to take an immune suppressant every day for the rest of her life to prevent her body from rejecting the organ.

Hasini’s family is depending on donors to help now that her hospital can no longer provide the Tacrolimus tablets that she received for free until a few weeks ago. She takes eight and a half tablets a day and the cost adds up to more than $200 a month, just for that one medicine.

“We are being told (by the hospital) that they don’t know when they will have this tablet again,” said Ishara Thilini, Hasini’s older sister.

The family sold their home and Hasini’s father got a job in the Middle East to help pay for her medical treatment, but his income is barely enough.

Cancer hospitals, too, are struggling to maintain stocks of essential drugs to ensure uninterrupted treatment.

“Don’t get ill, don’t get injured, don’t do anything that will make you go to a...