Prof. C.S.K. Gamakaranage

Dean, Faculty of Medicine

The Faculty of Medicine is the 8th faculty of the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka and is the 10th Medical Faculty of the country. We have already achieved a remarkable development in infrastructure development, quality, and successful accreditation, high quality delivery of medical education with a broader national and international recognition. Notably, our faculty shines as the most beautiful and largest medical faculty in the country and apparently in South Asia.

As a young faculty, we have considerable challenges in front of us. We have gained the attraction of high-quality academics and now have the capacity to improve the teaching and learning activities with an aim of achieving excellence in higher education. We cultivate the ‘good doctor’ concept, in contrast to a ‘talented doctor,’ with the understanding that a good doctor has the talent as well as the values necessary to function with empathy, compassion, and demonstrate the role of a responsible and accountable person in society, and works towards the development of the nation and humanity, not merely themselves.

Our biggest strength is our Hospital, the Teaching Hospital Ratnapura (THR), which covers a target population of about 2 million, i.e., 10% of the country's population. We have an excellent extended faculty of consultants and doctors teaching with enthusiasm, with the shared goal of delivering high-quality education. We are at the verge of unveiling our professorial clinical complex at the THR with a bed capacity of over 400, adding to the existing 1200. Nonetheless, we will be able to deliver outpatient care for about 1000 patients per day through this professorial unit clinic complex. This will improve the health care provision of the region with a remarkable jump in quality and quantity.

We are fully equipped with high-tech facilities necessary to conduct quality research and have ample researchers with national and international recognition, with an opportunity to contribute to research and innovation of the country. This will eventually pave the path to inculcate the thinking pattern of our undergraduates beyond the horizon of being a good doctor to be a scientist as well. We are all prepared to accept postgraduate students in the year to come, with the best facilities and environment to satisfy their training requirements.

Universities in the world have developed cities and nations, not just education. Our medical faculty is the largest development project in the Ratnapura District ever done, in addition to the Samanala Dam Hydropower project. Energizing with the ongoing expansion of railways and highway projects, this faculty could contribute to the development of our region and the lives of the people. I welcome students, academics, and other staff joining us with a warm heart and promise that we will provide you with a highly satisfying teaching and learning environment with a nature blended satisfying experience.