by
Prof.Carlo Fonseka – Chairman WKMH, Seeduwa

Vijaya Kumaratunga (9 October 1945-16 February 1988)

Please give me a little space to tell the world how a minor hospital has served to perpetuate the nostalgic and melancholic memory of a major film actor – Wijaya Kumaratunga – the most adored cinema idol Sri Lanka ever had. He is also the most venerated political actor in recent memory because he brought so much courage into his principled politics, and paid the price for it.

As Ernest Hemmingway poignantly said, if people bring so much courage to this world, the world kills them in order to break them. He was killed in broad daylight as he stepped out of his home at Narahenpita on 16 February 1988. His little daughter and son saw him being gunned down, and more than a quarter of a century after the traumatic experience avoid politics like the plague.

For my part, after speaking on behalf of his family at his sensational televised funeral on 22 February, I resolved never to speak in public about my incomparable martyred nephew. Even President Chandrika Kumaratunga failed to persuade me to change my resolve.

What I am going to do here is to recount briefly the great service that the small hospital – WKMH – built in Seeduwa, the village where Wijaya was born and bred, has done over the years to render his memory gratefully remembered by the people of his area

Incentive to Voters

To tell nothing but the truth, in the run-up to President Chandrika Kumaratunga’s second presidential election in 1999 the hospital was hastily conceived and quickly built. Sensing that voters in Sri Lanka have become hard bargainers who, as they say, give nothing for nothing and damn little for six pence, it was decided to build a hospital in the Katana electorate as an incentive to electors to vote according to their primed conscience. And so WKMH came into existence in 1999 on 9 October, Wijaya’s birthday.

The Wijaya Kumaratunga Foundation, President Chandrika’s loyal supporters in the world of business and her able assistant Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, MP for Katana, were the main social forces behind the laudable project. From its inception I have been honorary Chairman of the WKMH which is fully funded by the state.

The virtual CEO of the WKMH from its inception has been Doctor Sarojini Jayalath, one of my former beloved pupils in the Colombo Medical School. As a member of the Board of Management of the WKMH she has run the hospital with exemplary dedication. The superlative managerial skills of Mr. Neil Umagiliya a business executive in the Katunayake free trade zone have been freely available to the hospital from day one.

Develompent

In the beginning WKMH had two wards male and female each with 30 beds; a large OPD; a well equipped Emergency Treatment Unit and a small unused operating theatre. The whole staff of doctors, nurses, laboratory technicians and so on added up to a total of 26 people. Today, 15 years later, the hospital has a staff of 180, a hugely attended OPD, an extremely busy ETU, several specialist clinics and above all a state of the art Eye Hospital. It is the Eye Hospital that has put WKMH on the map of Sri Lanka. This came to pass by a fortuitous concourse of circumstances.

Enter Dr. Shamintha

To tell it like it happened, at that time, my amiable pupil Dr. Anton Costa of Negombo with a Post graduate Diploma in Ophthalmology from the UK was working (unhappily) in the eye department of the Colombo North Teaching Hospital at Ragama. On his way to and from Ragama, Dr. Anton had to pass the WKMH which borders on the Colombo-Negambo main road. One day for old time’s sake Dr. Anton Costa dropped into see me at the WKMH and noting the unused operating theatre asked me whether he could use the theatre to perform simple cataract surgery.

I jumped at the idea and persuaded the BoM that after fulfilling the due formalities we should welcome Dr. Costa to WKMH at no cost to us. (He was paid by the Ragama Hospital). And Dr. Costa, unostentatiously and quietly by old-fashioned cataract surgery bestowed the gift of sight to many poor people in Wijaya’s village. Gradually the WKMH acquired a reputation for curing efficiently and compassionately colds, coughs, fevers – and blindness!

In the meantime President Chandrika, having gone thru hell and losing an eye had been re-elected for a second term. With her active support the BoM decided to build a state of the art eye unit at the WKMH. This became a reality but no consultant specialist eye surgeon thought it worthwhile to join the WKMH on a full time basis. At that point in desperation I sought the advice of my former pupils who are eye surgeons and persuaded the BoM to entrust eye care at the WKMH to an untested young man Dr. Shamintha Amarathunga who had recently acquired an MD in ophthalmology. The rest of course is history.

Single-handedly Dr. Amarathunga transformed the WKMH into a centre which attracted patients from all nine provinces in the country. No hospital in the country can match the record of the WKMH for cataract surgery. I have repeatedly watched with amazement the dexterity with which Dr. Amaratunga deals with cataracts. From beginning to end the procedure by which Dr. Amaratunga restores vision to an eye blinded by a cataract lasts no more than 3 minutes.

Believe it or not from 1 March 2006 up to date he has performed no less than 75,283 cataract operations. At one 12 hour session he gave the gift of sight to 254 people with cataract. And post operative complications have been negligible.

As Chairman of the WKMH, I have directed my close relatives and friends with cataracts to Dr. Amarathunga and they have had nothing but good to say of him. When it came to my turn to have eye care including cataract surgery, however, it was to Drs Charith and Imalka Fonseka that I naturally turned.

For one thing, they are among my most brilliant and dearest former pupils who I can blindly trust. For another, they have been my eye doctors ever since I needed their attention which I have received with utmost compassion and care. Dr. Amarathunga, moreover, is too young to have been my pupil at all. So to me he is a relatively unknown entity. And what is more, he is not even a product of the Colombo Medical School, the mother of all medical schools in our blessed Lanka!