Soldiers guard a fuel station in Colombo on March 22, 2022. Sri Lanka ordered troops to petrol stations as sporadic protests erupted among the thousands of motorists queueing up daily for scarce fuel. The decision to position troops near petrol pumps and kerosene supply points came after three elderly people dropped dead during their wait in long queues, Reuters said. Photo: AFP

Sri Lanka's doctors warned on Sunday they were nearly out of life-saving medicines and said the island nation's economic crisis threatened a worse death toll than the coronavirus pandemic.

Weeks of power blackouts and severe shortages of food, fuel and pharmaceuticals have brought widespread misery to Sri Lanka, which is suffering its worst downturn since independence in 1948.

The Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) said that all hospitals in the country no longer had access to imported medical tools and vital drugs.

Several facilities have already suspended routine surgeries since March because they were dangerously low on anesthetics, but the SLMA said that even emergency procedures may not be possible very soon.

"We are made to make very difficult choices. We have to decide who gets treatment and who will not," the group said Sunday, after releasing a letter they had sent President Gotabaya Rajapaksa days earlier to warn him of the situation.

Mounting public anger over the crisis has seen large protests calling for Rajapaksa's resignation.

Thousands of people braved heavy rains to keep up a demonstration outside the leader's seafront office in the capital Colombo for a second day.

Business leaders joined calls for the president to step down on Saturday and said the island's chronic fuel shortages had seen their operations hemorrhage cash.

Rajapaksa's government is seeking an IMF bailout to help extricate the South Asian country from the crisis, which has seen skyrocketing food prices and the local currency collapse in value by a third in the past month. 

AFP