Young Doctor Representative 2021 - 2023
Dr Sankha Randenikumara (Sri Lanka)
Sankha Randenikumara is a young Family Physician from Sri Lanka. He serves as an administrator in a state hospital and runs his own evening Family Practice: ‘The Family Health Clinic’ closer to the capital.
In 2012, Sankha graduated from Sri Jayewardenepura University, Colombo, Sri Lanka. After his internship, his career started as a rural primary care doctor in Southern Sri Lanka. The team led by Sankha soon transformed the services and the infrastructure provided at his underdeveloped rural hospital to award-winning levels, later recognised by the World Bank as a model primary care hospital in Sri Lanka. This achievement made him be appointed to the expert committee which developed the World Bank country project, ‘Reorganising Primary Health Care in Sri Lanka’, as the junior-most member.
Sankha had a special interest in Family Medicine since his medical student days. He earned his postgraduate qualification in 2019 in Family Medicine. Sankha is the Honorary Assistant Treasurer of the College of General Practitioners of Sri Lanka, also serving as a GP trainer and a mentor. Sankha has been Honorary Secretary of the ‘Palliative and End-of-Life Care Task Force’ of the Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) from its inception. He pioneered the formation of ‘The SLMA Young Members’ Forum’ in 2021 as a platform for young doctors in Sri Lanka. He has also served as Regional Vice President (Central Asia) of the Commonwealth Medical Association since 2020.
Sankha’s involvement in WONCA started at the WONCA South Asia Regional Conference 2016 held in Sri Lanka, in which he contributed as the Social Secretary of the HOC. He was selected as the Chair of The Spice Route (WONCA Young Doctors’ Movement of South Asia) Sri Lanka and later elected the Regional Chair of The Spice Route Movement in 2019. The Spice Route Movement became highly active within his tenure and well-established among the young doctors in the South Asia region. In addition, Sankha has been an enthusiastic member of some of the WONCA working parties since 2016 and serves as a Council member of the WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice and the Vice-Chair of the WONCA Working Party on the Environment.
Having a great interest in archaeology, Sankha bears a Postgraduate Diploma in Archaeology and is reading for a Masters in Archaeology by research on the ‘Dietary patterns of the Holocene hunter-gatherers in Sri Lanka’.
He has presented scientific papers in local and international fora on both Medicine and Archaeology and is the author of a few publications. He has also been honoured to be selected to deliver two orations, namely, ‘Dr BDJ de Silva Oration’ of the College of General Practitioners of Sri Lanka for Innovations in Family Medicine in 2017 and ‘CG Uragoda History of Medicine Lecture’ of the SLMA in 2018. Sankha was also awarded the Taiwan Family Medicine Research Award in 2018 in Seoul, South Korea. His research interests are rural practice, planetary health, lifestyle medicine and palliative care.
Sankha’s leisure activities are reading, acting, birding, and travelling to places of archaeological interest.