Sri Lanka loses 10 percent of its doctors amid exodus after economic crisis

Faced with spiralling inflation and poor pay, Sri Lanka’s doctors have migrated en masse to other nations in the past two years, crippling hospitals.

Colombo, Sri Lanka – The bullying from a senior health official was bad enough. A sense of betrayal by government authorities during COVID-19 made it worse. But the economic crisis that pummelled Sri Lanka in the wake of the pandemic was the breaking point for Lahiru Prabodha Gamage.

The 35-year-old Sri Lankan doctor left Sri Lanka in January 2023 to take up a job in the United Kingdom, after working in a government hospital in the remote town of Hatton, 120km (75 miles) east of the capital Colombo, for six years. He is now a senior house officer for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

It wasn’t an easy decision. “I really love my country. That will never change,” Gamage told Al Jazeera. “But no matter how much money I earned, I had to pay back huge loans.” And with prices soaring as the economy collapsed – inflation touched a record 73 percent in late 2022  – Gamage felt he had no choice but to leave.

He is not alone. According to the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA), the biggest trade union of government doctors in Sri Lanka, more than 1,700 doctors have left the country over the last two years, primarily for economic reasons. They constitute nearly 10 percent of doctors on the island.

The effects on the country’s already fragile healthcare system are visible. In April last year, all emergency surgeries were suspended for several weeks in the District General Hospital in Embilipitiya, about 200km (120 miles) south of Colombo, after two anaesthesiologists there left the country. As a temporary measure, another anaesthesiologist from a nearby hospital