Dear Editor,

I write in response to your editorial, “Why does medicine keep running out at the hospital?” First, credit where it is due. Your newsroom continues to ask the questions that many are thinking, but few dare to ask. In doing so, you also perform a quiet act of kindness for our doctors, nurses, and frontline staff—those who must face the public daily, apologising for shortages they did not create, carrying the weight of decisions made far from hospital wards. They took an oath to heal, not to explain why there is nothing left to give.

As for your question, "Why does medicine keep running out?"

The answer, sadly, does not require a medical degree. It requires only a look at our national priorities. We were promised, loudly and publicly, that health would be a priority under the current administration. That essential stocks would be ordered in advance. 

Yet recent decisions tell a different story. Over two million tala was swiftly approved for a parliamentary dining facility, an item absent from the budget, yet treated as an emergency. This, while hospitals ration basic medicine. For over a decade, tents have fed parliamentarians without incident. Apparently, discomfort is intolerable unless it is experienced by patients waiting for paracetamol, blood, or dignity.

Then comes the announcement of over thirty-two million tala for “Back-to-School.” A generous phrase, but one curiously stretched to include newborns and the elderly. One wonders where the guidelines are, and whether this largesse might have better served teachers’ salaries, training, scholarships, classrooms, or books. Or perhaps, dare we say it - medicine. But priorities, it seems, are clearer when tables are set, and chairs are cushioned.

So the question remains, and it is no longer rhetorical: what truly matters to those seated at the decision-making tables? Comfortable dining, or a functioning health system? Grand promises, or grounded planning? Until priorities are aligned with reality, medicine will keep running out—not because we lack partners or possibilities, but because we continue to choose differently.

Yours sincerely,

Astra Vale