Doc­tors at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal have been told that a short­age of anaes­thet­ic drugs will af­fect sur­gi­cal ser­vices.

Yes­ter­day they re­ceived an email ti­tled ‘Crit­i­cal Short­ages Af­fect­ing Elec­tive Ser­vices at SFGH’.

Guardian Me­dia re­ceived a copy of the email which came from Dr Crys­tal Seu­radge the Act­ing Head of Anes­thet­ics and In­ten­sive Care which said that due to the crit­i­cal short­ages, sur­gi­cal ser­vices will be se­vere­ly af­fect­ed.

The email went on to say that there is no Bupi­va­caine, Di­clofenac, Neostig­mine, Ephedrine and spinal nee­dles.

In the in­ter­nal cor­re­spon­dence Dr Seu­radge said, “Again, I am re­it­er­at­ing that due to these short­ages elec­tive ser­vices will be af­fect­ed se­vere­ly. As such I am kind­ly re­quest­ing that lists be planned ac­cord­ing­ly.”

For some doc­tors there this set­back is just the lat­est of many.

Speak­ing un­der the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, one doc­tor told us that there are no biop­sy nee­dles avail­able for quite some time there­fore if a pa­tient need­ed a prostate biop­sy, he would have to buy his own at a cost of $300.

An­oth­er doc­tor told us that the Ex­tra­cor­po­re­al Shock Wave Lithotrip­sy or ESWL ma­chine that us­es shock waves to break up kid­ney stones has been down for months.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the flex­i­ble cys­to­scope which ex­am­ines the in­te­ri­or of the blad­der is al­so not func­tion­ing.

The doc­tors re­vealed these prob­lems cou­pled with the drug short­age will mean pa­tients will have to wait even longer for their elec­tive pro­ce­dures.

Guardian Me­dia was told that COVID-19 had al­ready sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tributed to de­lays. An ex­am­ple was giv­en where if some­one came to­day to the SFGH for an elec­tive pro­ce­dure, their best-case sce­nario is get­ting a date in Sep­tem­ber.

At­tempts were made to con­tact the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, Dr Bri­an Ar­mour how­ev­er all calls and mes­sages went unan­swered. Guardian Me­dia then for­ward­ed the email we re­ceived and ques­tions to the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions De­part­ment which at 3:30 pm yes­ter­day ac­knowl­edged our ques­tions and re­quest­ed an hour to re­spond.

One hour lat­er they asked for an­oth­er hour, how­ev­er up un­til press time, there was no fur­ther re­sponse.