Doctors Janith Warnasekara and Ayesh Hettiarachchi have won 'Best Paper' Awards At SLMA 133rd Anniversary International Medical Congress that was held at Sri Lanka Medical Association.

Of the research papers that were selected as oral presentations by the congress scientific committee, which included 10 oral presentations from the Faculty of Medicine and Allied Sciences, the Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, the research paper presented by Dr.Janith Warnasekara titled “Meteorological Associations of Leptospirosis in Different Climate Zones of Sri Lanka; a Time Series Analysis” won the years’ best research presentation (1st Place).

Dr.Warnasekara is a member of the leptospirosis research group at Department of Community Medicine since 2015. His paper conducted leptospirosis disease incidence predictions successfully using the meteorological variables separately for dry and wet zones, and was part of his PhD work. Other authors of the paper were, Agampodi SB, Ranawaka HCJ, Dembatapitiya DRWNK, Wijesinghe, PATAB, Dewapriya IKS, Koralegedara KIS and Abeynayake R.

Meanwhile, Dr.Ayesh Hettiarachchi who presented his initial MPhil research work on Heart Disease Complicating Pregnancy in a paper titled “Prevalence of Cardiovascular Conditions among First Trimester Pregnant Females in Anuradhapura District”, won the Sir Nicholas Atygalle award for the best oral presentation.

The research work, which is part of RaPCo study explained the need for systematic screening for heart diseases to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality due to heart diseases. Other authors of the paper were Lokunarangoda NC, Agampodi TC, Jayasinghe HMIU, Koralegedara KIS, Warnasekara YPJN, Madhushika MMH and Agampodi SB.

Both are past students of Badulla Central College.

Source - SLMC.