Category Archives: medical puzzles

Dr Brendon Gooneratne: Versatile Talents …. Underlined from Outside His House and from Deep Within

A Note from Michael Roberts, July 2021

I first encountered Brendon Gooneratne as a formidable fast bowler playing for the Colombo branch of the University of Ceylon against against my Peradeniya branch around 1959/60, mainly as a pace bowler. Thereafter, I encountered him briefly as he courted Yasmine Dias Bandaranaike, a colleague in the Arts Faculty at Peradeniya …. and then  for a month or so when the married couple were neighbours of my household at Augusta Hill in Peradeniya University in late 1971. We have met subsequently on and off in Colombo and Sydney because of our strong interest in Ceyloniana.

  A reproduction of a framed photo of Brendon at Mount Kosciusko taken by his wife Yasmine

Meeting and listening to Yasmine at the Galle Literary Festival in 2008 was a great pleasure. Her ‘imprint’ has been captured for one and all in an essay I presented then as “January 2008 – When all roads led to Galle” [web-location lost].

Their continued ‘investments’ in the island were deepened by the residences which this couple invested in within the city of Colombo and as “Pemberton” (a conversion of a planting bungalow named ‘Pemberton’) in the upcountry terrain of Uva. So, Brendon’s ‘departure’ from our life-world is a loss of some magnitude. I mark it here in Thuppahi with (A) the mundane account in Wikipedia and (B) a moving testimony from his daughter Devika Gooneratne, …. a farewell that is as remarkable as it is worthy as epitaph — not least for its grounded assessment of the medical staff in Badulla area upcountry in ways that speak volumes for the personnel and system. 

So, this Note is a “Hurrah” for Brendon and “Three Cheers” for Devika and her mother.

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The Wikipedia Tale of the Murugappans of Biloela … Today, Mid-2021

Murugappan family asylum claims  .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murugappan_family_asylum_claims

Kokilapathmapriya Nadesalingam (Priya) and Nadesalingam Murugappan (Nades)[1] are two Sri Lankan Tamils seeking asylum in Australia. The couple married in Australia and have two Australian-born children. Until their detention by Australian Border Force in March 2018, the family was resident in the central Queensland town of Biloela, and consequently referred to as the Biloela family by some media.[2][3] The cause of the couple and their children has been supported by some residents of Biloela as well as asylum-seeker advocates.[4]

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Grim Realities: Encountering Battlefield Casualties

Dr Gamani Goonetilleke, whose chosen title is “Treating war victims: a learning experience” ….. https://drgamini.org/2020/07/13/first-exposure-to-war-injuries/

As a medical student or as a doctor, I was never taught about War injuries, their implications or the principles of their management. Nor did I study the topic. We grew up and learnt medicine and surgery during peaceful times when these were not seen. The initial exposure to these gruesome circumstances was dreadful and horrendous. It was my duty to attend to these casualties as they were brought to hospital.

Legs amputated by blast

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Oh Mein Gott! Lanka’s West Coast suffocated by Plastic!

News Item in The Island, 30 May 2021: “Sri Lanka battles waves of plastic waste from burning ship”

Tonnes of plastic pellets from a burning container ship swamped Sri Lanka’s west coast Friday, prompting a ban on fishing as international efforts to salvage the vessel dragged into a ninth day.

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Deadly Covid Abyss looms in Si Lanka: Two Grounded Essays by Peiris versus Peiris

The recent article presented by medical specialists Malik Peiris and Kamini Mendis  has led to informed ethnographic set of comments by Gerald Peiris of Kandy**.…a nd drawn a Response from Dr Malik Peiris that is exrtemely disconcerting. The situation in Sri Lanka is DIRE …  and going to plunge to further depths.

 

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Red Alert! Commentary on the Failures of GoSL pinpointed by Peiris and Malik

A Cricketing Friend with Senior Mercantile Firm Experience, 21 May 2021

If the powers that be sought the advice of these professionals the country would not be in the situation we are in. The army cannot decide what is best on medical matters…… https://thuppahis.com/2021/05/21/for-lanka-a-science-based-strategy-to-control-the-present-covid-situation/

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IPL Kayoed …. KnockeD OUT!

HEADLINES 

  • IPL postponed amidst Covid-Surge
  • Australian players set for IPL exodus to the Maldives

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Rendering Agriculture in Lanka ARID with Silly Science & Mad Economics

Chandre Dharmawardana, whose preferred title is  “Political Rhetoric, or Sounding the Death Knell of Sri Lanka’s Agriculture?”

A quote attributed to the Greek play write Euripides says that “ Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”.  Reading the news from Sri Lanka, one can only wonder if a prescient Euripides had Lanka’s successive rulers since 1970 in mind.

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IPL Cricket Bubble perforated …. And …

HEADLINES Everywhere

  • Players Exodus from the IPL”The Australian, 27 April 2021
  • “Million-dollar Aussies begin mad dash to safety as Indian exodus looms” –7newscom.au
  • Australia’s Tye tips IPL exodus from COVID-hit India”Reuters in The Hindu

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Economic Warriors welcomed by Bio-Warriors …. Today

Priya Cooray

Notwithstanding the fact that it could have been done much earlier, it is still commendable on the part of the Government of Sri Lanka to recently approve a limited number (50) of overseas workers to return in every Srilankan Airlines Cargo flight. Sri Lankan Foreign Missions and the Expatriate Associations in the Middle Eastern countries had relentlessly pursued the Government for approval. Even though it is only for those who pay to be quarantined in hotels, it significantly reduces the pressure on queued up demand to facilitate special repatriation flights.

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