Young Doctor Representative 2021 - 2023
Dr Sankha Randenikumara (Sri Lanka)
Sankha Randenikumara is a Family Physician from Sri Lanka and the Immediate Past Young Doctors’ Lead of WONCA. He currently serves as the Honorary Secretary of the WONCA South Asia Region.
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 elected the Regional Chair of ‘The Spice Route Movement’ (WONCA Young Doctors’ Movement of South Asia) 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 groups since 2016 and serves as the Co-Chair of the Special Interest Group on Policy Advocacy, Chair elect of the WONCA Working Party on Planetary Health and a Council member of the WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice.
In 2012, Sankha graduated from Sri Jayewardenepura University, Colombo, Sri Lanka. 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. Accordingly, he earned his postgraduate qualification in 2019 in Family Medicine. Among various responsibilities he held, Sankha has served as the Honorary Assistant Treasurer of the College of General Practitioners of Sri Lanka (CGPSL) and the Secretary of the Mentoring Committee of CGPSL, in addition to 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 Lankan medical fraternity. He has also served as Regional Vice President (Central Asia) of the Commonwealth Medical Association from 2020-2022.
Having a great interest in archaeology, Sankha has followed postgraduate studies in archaeology and has researched on dietary patterns of the Holocene hunter-gatherers in Sri Lanka. He is currently reading for a Masters in Public Health in Environment and Health stream in London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Sankha has been an invited speaker to many local and international fora and has also presented papers on both Medicine and Archaeology. He has delivered two prestigious orations, published several papers on international journals and contributed to a few book chapters. Sankha was awarded the Taiwan Family Medicine Research Award in 2018. In addition to Family Medicine and Primary Care, his research interests are on planetary health, lifestyle medicine, mental health, palliative care and health care quality & patient safety.
Sankha’s leisure activities are reading, acting, birding, and travelling to places of archaeological interest.