Dr.Janith Warnasekara Received “Early Career Research Award” at ILS 2019, Vancouver, Canada

Dr.Janith Warnasekara, received the International Leptospirosis Society “Early Career Research Award” in the ILS 2019 held in Vancouver, Canada.

Dr.Warnasekara presented two papers; “Microgeographical difference of leptospirosis in Sri Lanka” and “Use of Quantitative PCR to Detect Lower Level of Leptospiraemia: Improving the Sensitivity and Validity “. The latter was a paper on improving a long practiced misinterpretation of realtime polymerase chain reactions on leptospirosis diagnosis. Using experimental and clinical approaches, change of diagnosis from “not detected” to “probable” was suggested under certain conditions, changing the widely accepted “possible, probable and confirmed” case definitions for leptospirosis.

The research work was a part of ICIDR research project on DoCM; a collaborative project with Yale University, USA funded by National Institute of Health, USA. DoCM received five years funding for leptospirosis research from this grant.

Previous publications related to this project can be found in following links.

1. Leptospirosis in Sri Lanka
2. Study protocol: characterising the clinical, epidemiological and aetiological aspects of leptospirosis in Sri Lanka: a hospital based clinico-epidemiological study
3. Estimating the burden of leptospirosis in Sri Lanka; a systematic review