Janaka de Silva

Professor H. Janaka de Silva is a Sri Lankan academic physician. De Silva is Professor of Medicine at the University of Kelaniya.^[1][2] He is also Director of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine at the University of Colombo^[3] and Chairman of the National Research Council of Sri Lanka^[4]

Education

Janaka de Silva was educated at Royal College, Colombo. He qualified from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo with MBBS in 1982, and captained the University Rugby team. De Silva then went on to obtain a MD from the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo and a DPhil from the University of Oxford on a Wingate Scholarship,^[5] Wellcome Trust Fellowship and an Overseas Research Student award. He had his higher specialist clinical training at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and obtained MRCP (UK).

Educational and Professional activities

De Silva was Dean of Medicine at Kelaniya and a member of the University Grants Commission of Sri Lanka. In the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, he chaired the Board of Study in Medicine, the Specialty Board in Gastroenterology, and the Board of Management.^[6]

De Silva and colleagues set up the first formal training programme for gastroenterologists in Sri Lanka at the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine. Together with Kemal Deen and other colleagues he set up a liver transplant service in Sri Lanka.^[7]

De Silva is Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians London, the Ceylon College of Physicians, which he served as President in 2004,^[8] and the National Academy of Sciences of Sri Lanka.^[9] He was President of the Gastroenterological and Digestive Endoscopy Society of Sri Lanka and a Member of the Council of the Asia Pacific Association of Gastroenterology.

Research

De Silva has published several book chapters and research papers in peer reviewed journals.^[10] He was Joint Editor of the Ceylon Medical Journal ^[11] and the Online Appendix of Kumar and Clark's Clinical Medicine, and is a Deputy Editor of PLoS NTD.^[12]

De Silva is a Senior Advisor to the South Asian Clinical Toxicology Research Collaboration,^[13] and is on Asia-Pacific regional working parties on portal hypertension, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and inflammatory bowel disease where he was involved in the development of several disease management guidelines. He has served as a WHO temporary advisor, was team leader of the WHO funded project that estimated the global burden of snakebite in 2007 and was on the panel of experts that developed guidelines for the management of snakebite in the Southeast Asia region in 2016. ^[14][15]

Honours

De Silva received Honorary fellowships from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, the Royal College of Physicians of Thailand, and the College of General Practitioners of Sri Lanka. He has delivered several orations and received Presidential Awards for research. De Silva also received The Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award for Academic Leadership and Accomplishment, The Vice Chancellors and Directors Excellence Award for the Most Outstanding Researcher in Medical and Allied Sciences - a lifetime award, and the highest national titular honor for science in Sri Lanka - Vidyajyothi.^[16][17]

References