When I was warded at the National Eye Hospital for a cataract operation in January this year, there was also an elderly patient like me, among other patients. He had advanced cataract and could not see properly even to walk up to the toilet. Other patients had to help him to get about. He was one Mr. Chandrasekera from Matugama.

After the operation, when the bandage was removed following day by the nurse in the ward to administer the eye drops, he burst out in joy and when he came out he started to speak in glowing terms about the wonder that the hospital had done to him. In the course he also castigated in unmistakable terms some men who had misled him for three years and had taken him to several native eye specialists, though his children had wanted him to enter the hospital for treatment. These men, he said, had frightened him by saying that the hospital would use big machinery and tools to remove the small cataract on the delicate eyes and he, in his fear, had imagined that the doctors would be using instruments like the hacksaw to remove the cataract! The men had even taken him to Anuradhapura, all at his expense of course, to have some juice of a plant applied on the toes and saying that once the juice was applied the cataract would disappear in no time. Had he listened to them for some more time without entering the hospital, they would even have taken him to some kattadiyas to cure him of the cataract!

There are so many people in our country who are suffering like that with regard to almost all ailments. It is only after the ailments become worse and often incurable, that they go to the hospitals.

It is all due to the ignorance of the people, even among the so-called educated people. The propaganda by some people, especially in the rural areas, is so much and so great that the poor patients in their anxiety fall victim to their propaganda.

It is here that our press, especially the Sinhala and Tamil press, can do a great service to the people and the country by dispelling the fears of the people by writing articles and interviewing people like Mr. Chandrasekera and publishing them prominently in their papers. Today, we have more publicity for murderers, rapists, robbers and the like.

When Dr. Abraham T. Kovoor was living, he did a great service to the people and the country by attacking these beliefs and the people who spread them, though in his special aggressive way.
Arul
Colombo 13