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Sri Lanka Army

Defender of the Nation

01st April 2023 19:23:56 Hours

Army Officer’s Timely Action Saves Life of Lady Land Official with Two Kids

Every aspect of multifaceted training skills, practices and overall professional conduct of a soldier who accidentally confronted with a choice between ‘life and death’ of a woman passenger in an SLTB bus has been exposed when the SLTB bus with its full complement was plying across the general area of Kottukachchiya along Puttlam-Anamaduwa road on Friday (24 March).

It all began when the woman passenger, an official of the Land Section at Kuliyapitiya Divisional Secretariat on her way home in the bus after a conference on the same day in the Puttlam District Secretariat suddenly developed an acute chest pain, and desperately began to cry in pain, but no one in the bus, almost full with more than 60 passengers by then, appeared sensitive at all to her terrible predicament or her deteriorating health condition and her pain.

Civil-clad Major R.H.M Sugath Rajakaruna of 4 Sri Lanka Light Infantry Regiment serving at Puttlam Recruit Training School and resident in Surakkulama area who spotted her helpless condition inside the bus promptly intervened and adopted preliminary first-aid procedures with the support of a woman passenger (medical assistant in a private hospital) in the bus while simultaneously calling the assistance of the 1990 ambulance service.

Failing to get the 1990 ambulance service, he went to the extent of getting in touch with one of his nearby friends over the phone and sought his immediate transport assistance to take her to the nearest Anamaduwa Base Hospital for treatment in his car. It worked and their timely action enabled the admission of the affected lady official, a mother of two kids, resident in Katupotha area after rushing her to the nearest Anamaduwa Hospital in his friend's car.

However, as doctors were on the job Major R.H.M Sugath Rajakaruna waited in the emergency ward until her husband returning from Wariyapola took charge of her in hospital.

Had she not been given first aid and brought to the hospital within next 20 minutes, her life could not have been saved or would have ended in permanent paralysis, Medical specialists in the hospital have maintained.