Prof. Lamabadusuriya – lifetime achievement award and induction into Hall of Fame of Sri Lanka College of Paediatricians

Ladies and Gentlemen, this year, the Sri Lanka College of Paediatricians has commenced a new enterprise. It is the inauguration of a Lifetime Achievement Award with automatic Induction into the Hall of Fame of the college. Our college is the very first medical academic organisation in Sri Lanka to commence such an award of unrestrained splendour.

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At the Council Meeting of the College on the 11th of April 2025, a name was proposed for this award. It was approved unanimously. That laureate is Professor Sanath Punsara Lamabadusuriya.

Providing a citation for him is perhaps akin to taking coal to Newcastle, as the man and his achievements are well-known. I will only attempt to provide a bird's-eye view of the person to suit this formal occasion.

In the year 49 BC, the uncrowned Roman Emperor Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River with his army, and loudly exclaimed in Latin, "Alea iacta est," which means "the die has been cast." Sanath, when you were born on the 30th of December 1942, to a family with the surname starting with “Lama”, meaning ‘child’, the die was indeed cast. Destiny had perhaps decreed that you would become a Paediatrician; a calling which started your long road to undisputed fame.

Sanath Lamabadusuriya, a 20-year-old Royalist, entered the Colombo Medical Faculty in 1962, not as a future prodigy but as a bit of a dark horse. Then, in their final MBBS Examination in 1967, the guy bloomed, overtook everybody else, secured 2nd Class Honours with Distinctions in Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynaecology and was placed first in the combined order of merit of those who qualified from Peradeniya and Colombo, the only two Faculties of Medicine in Sri Lanka at that time.