I actually don't have the details of the state of the medical professional capacity in Sri Lanka. I know that the international Red Cross have medical staff as part of our international team in the country, and I know we are providing medical supplies to the clinics and so on.
We're not appealing for medical assistance from Canada or for medical personnel from Canada. We actually have a reasonably robust system for sourcing both materials and people. What we need now is in fact greater access. Our greatest concern is that we're not able to regularly deliver the medical supplies we have to the clinic that is attending to the war-wounded on the front line, so we're appealing for more access. We have the supplies in Sri Lanka, and we have a supply chain that provides the appropriate medical supplies.
For instance, I heard the news that today we were able to provide the first consignment of medicines to the hospital in the conflict area for the first time in two weeks. More than 50 essential medical items, including vaccines for children, were delivered to the hospital. The senior health official in the region said they were very happy to receive the supplies, which would help them run the hospital for a couple of more weeks, but despite their repeated requests, we have not been able to deliver the anesthetic equipment or the blood bags required for surgery. This is not because we did not want to deliver them. This is because they would not have been allowed through.
So our concern is the access for humanitarian organizations to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people affected by this conflict, as per international humanitarian laws.