May 09, Ratnapura: Sri Lanka's government Nurses Association today gave up their strike at Ratnapura hospital after three patients died due to unavailability of treatments.

The Marxist Jantha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) backed nurses' trade union came to this decision as the media gave wide publicity to the deaths of the patients and to the blatant disregard on the part of the trade union members for the public.

However, the trade union issuing a press release today disowned the deaths of the patients and further threatened the government with an island wide strike, if disciplinary action against its members continued.

The strike action was launched three days ago when the Health Ministry initiated disciplinary action against a male nurse who had reproached a trainee doctor few days earlier. The nurse was later transferred to another hospital pending investigations and the JVP backed trade union initiated a strike action demanding the transfer of the doctor.

The nurses' trade union, going against the accepted norm in country’s frequent health sector strikes, refrained from emergency services. They even locked up the medicine stores of the hospital making the medicines unavailable even for patients under critical conditions.

Sri Lanka is the only country in the region that provides free health service to the public spending billions of public funds on doctors and nurses salaries. However, the service is frequently disrupted by strikes even with fatal consequences due to internal clashes among various categories of health service employees.