It is indeed an honour and a privilege to be appointed as the president of the Sri Lanka College of Microbiologists for the year 2017-18.
I would like to congratulate the past presidents, the councils and all the members of the college for the mammoth tasks completed and started in the previous years.
The contribution made by the college in developing and publishing the “National Strategic Plan for combating Antimicrobial Resistance in Sri Lanka” is commendable. As we need to implement this Strategic Plan and also other Asian countries have the problem of Antimicrobial Resistance at a great magnitude, along with my council and other members I am planning an International Conference on Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) from 08th to 10th August 2018 at the Hotel Taj Samudra, Colombo.
As the education and training of clinicians, primary care physicians as well as other categories of healthcare personnel are of great importance to combat AMR, I am having the theme for this year as “Communicate and collaborate for clinical excellence”. With this in mind I am organising the above conference with many partners such as Sri Lanka Medical Association, Ceylon College of Physicians and hope to have workshops on Laboratory accreditation, Infection Prevention and Control and AMR for nurses, pharmacists and laboratory personnel in parallel to the main conference.
During the World Antibiotic Awareness Week the college printed and distributed posters for public awareness on AMR. The Facebook page of the college was used to disseminate messages on AMR. I also plan to have regular health messages related to infectious diseases published in the Facebook page of the college.
In addition to this the college will continue the other projects which were started in the previous years. I hope that we will be able to complete and publish National Infection Prevention and Control guidelines during this year with the support of the Ministry of Health. Another important task that I hope to complete this year is to publish the revised Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) manual for the use of IPC doctors, nurses and other staff working in Sri Lankan hospitals.
I plan to continue the Continuous Medical Education Programmes and other regular activities as in the past and hope I will get support from the council and members of the Sri Lanka College of Microbiologists as well as other professional colleges to carry out these activities.
Dr Kushlani Jayatilleke,
MBBS (Colombo), Diploma in Medical Microbiology, MD in Medical Microbiology
President,
Sri Lanka College of Microbiologists
