BY NEVILLE DE SILVA

So much is being said in Sri Lanka these days about our medicine men, of their practice and practices, their haps and mishaps that the news has been carried by wind and wave, not to mention technology, to this part of the world too.

It does remind one of a recent report in the local media of Asian hornets that are said to have invaded this pulsating heart of the old empire and are decimating the local bees that even Brexit might have to take a back seat until Scotland Yard launches a ‘sting’ operation to deal with it.

It was bad enough that the natives here have been bristling with anger at being virtually swamped by their European cousins who are being denigrated as “benefit vultures” and fattening themselves on British social welfare.

But now for the Brits to hear that aggressive hornets from their once farflung colonies could possibly wipe out local bees pollinating the flowers they nurture with such tender care unlike patients in some of Sri Lanka’s hospitals, have had their lips moving in apoplectic dissonance.

Not even such disturbing reports of the birds and the bees could kill the interest of Sri Lankans here who are regularly fed with first-hand stories of the goings-on in the medical fraternity brought here by returning members of the community or sent via so- called social media though one sometimes wonders what is so social about it.

Just a couple of days ago I was told of the on-going war of words between some officials of the Government Medical Officers Association -- more popularly known by the abbreviation GMOA -- and Education Minister Akila Kariyawasam, with the GMOA spokesman threatening to sue the daylights out of the minister.

One recalls that shortly after the change of guard in the Presidential Secretariat and Temple Trees there were so many politicians of varying and changing hues threatening legal action against others that one thought that perhaps the plethora of alleged cases of bribery and corruption would not even reach the perimeter of the court house.

If the briefless among the legal fraternity were salivating at the thought of a sudden boost to their bank balances, their hopes would have suffered deflation because those threats were as empty as the promises of politicians.

So one would have to wait and see whether the flexing of muscles and the threatened launch of legal missiles would have the devastating potential of those released by the Great Leader Kim Jong-un.

Meanwhile, it is worth recounting a couple of stories at least about Sri Lanka’s medical world brought to us from the Asian Miracle and the miraculous escapes some have had from sliding into bankruptcy at the sight of their medical bills and miscellaneous expenses.

The miracle, of course, is that some of them have managed to survive the heart seizures that followed the sight of their medical bills. It used to be said-and some say it is even truer today than then -that some doctors cure their patients with pills and then kill them with their bills.

One story was told by a person living in London who took a relative along to a Colombo private hospital for treatment. The patient was immediately warded and over a couple of days all sorts of tests carried out, under whose instructions he did not know. Having paid the unbelievably expensive bills he brought copies of the medical reports to London where he showed them to two consultants here. Both had said that half the tests done in Colombo were unnecessary and not related to the patient’s medical complaint.

That is how some private hospitals make their money at the expense of the patients.

Another story comes from a Sri Lankan consultant phy-