The SLMA is the oldest professional medical association in Asia and Australasia, with a proud history that dates back to 1887. The 133rd Anniversary International Medical Congress of the Sri Lanka Medical Association was held on 24th-26th July as a virtual medical congress this year.
The congress scientific committee has selected 54 research papers as oral presentations. These included 10 oral presentations from Faculty of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka and of those eight were by the DoCM academics and trainees.
E M Wijerama Award – for the best paper
The research paper presented by Dr.Janith Warnasekara titled “Meteorological Associations of Leptospirosis in Different Climate Zones of Sri Lanka; a Time Series Analysis” won this years’ best research presentation (1st Place) at the SLMA congress. Dr.Warnasekara is a member of the leptospirosis research group at DoCM since 2015. In this paper, leptospirosis disease incidence predictions were successfully done using the meteorological variables, separately for dry and wet zones. This research was part of his PhD work. Other authors of the paper were, Agampodi SB, Ranawaka HCJ, Dembatapitiya DRWNK, Wijesinghe, PATAB, Dewapriya IKS, Koralegedara KIS and Abeynayake R.
Sir Nicholas Attygalle Award – for the best paper (4th Place)
Dr.Ayesh Hettiarachchi presented his initial MPhil research work on Heart Disease Complicating Pregnancy in a paper titled “Prevalence of Cardiovascular Conditions among First Trimester Pregnant Females in Anuradhapura District”. This paper won the Sir Nicholas Atygalle award for the best oral presentation (4th place). The research work is part of RaPCo study and explained the need for systematic screening for heart diseases to reduce the maternal morbidity and mortality due to heart diseases. Other authors of the paper were Lokunarangoda NC, Agampodi TC, Jayasinghe HMIU, Koralegedara KIS, Warnasekara YPJN, Madhushika MMH and Agampodi SB.