Dr. Santhushya Fernando

Dr Santhushya Fernando graduated from Army Medical College, Pakistan. She joined Sri Jayewardenepura General Hospital and served as it’s Deputy Director for 8 years before she joined the Department of Medical Humanities, Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo in 2021. She has also served as a temporary lecturer in the Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka. She obtained MSc in Community Medicine in at the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo followed by MD in Community Medicine in 2017.  She was Board certified as a specialist in Community Medicine in 2019. She obtained her post-doctoral training at University of Oxford, UK.

She served as the Assistant Secretary of the College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka in 2011 and 2012 and as council member of the Perinatal Society of Sri Lanka in 2020. She has also served as a temporary advisor to the World Health Organization SEARO office and been a member of the regional steering committee for networking of centers of expertise on tropical diseases in the SEARO region in 2012.

She has carried out a number of original research projects and also been a part of research teams and has published and presented her research in national and international conferences and journals. In 2012 she won the NRC merit award for Scientific Publications and in 2010 won the Henry Rajaratnam Award for the best free paper at the Annual Academic Session of Ceylon College of Physicians. She was the recipient of several research grants including that from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Millennium promise Award (USA and Australia). She was also the recipient of the international corporation scholarship awarded by the Government of Japan for health management.

She has studied Social Anthropology at University of Oxford and has also trained by the University of Cape Town, South Africa in Medical Humanities. She has led several public debates in association with professional colleges in topics covering ethics, health and human rights such as termination of pregnancy, decriminalization of sex work and gender & reproductive rights.

She is a classical Indian dancer in Bharatha Natyam and is a trained vocalist in Indian classical music qualifying from Bhatkande University,India. She has performed as an international artist at University of Oxford with the all-girls Afghan orchestra Zohra to work towards emancipation and education of the girl child in Afghanistan and also globally. She has script supervised the movie “Handful of Leaves” that entered nine international film festivals gaining acclaim and is currently used as study material in international universities in applied Buddhism and social anthropology curricula. She is a recorded lyricist and is a translator of poetry from Urdu, Hindi and Bangla languages to Sihala and English. She is qualified in Islamyath (Islamic Studies) from Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan and is a member of the Triveni Project that uses art, dancing, music, poetry reading, mobile libraries and cinema to build understanding, group catharsis and social healing. She was also the recipient of the Indian Prime Minister’s gold medal for the best creative writer among SAARC countries at the first SAARC cultural festival held in New Delhi, India.