Kamini Nirmala Mendis

Kamini Nirmala Mendis is a Sri Lankan professor emeritus at the University of Colombo and former malaria expert at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Education

Mendis went to Visakha Vidyalaya school in Colombo.[1] She went to the University of Ceylon to study medicine in 1972, and then moved to the University of London in the UK for her PhD in 1980.[2] For her M.D. in Microbiology, to complete her medical training, Mendis returned to her alma mater in 1989, now split into the University of Colombo.[2]

Career

Mendis was awarded a National Presidents Award for Outstanding Citizens in 1983.[2] In 1988, Mendis established the Malaria Research Unit within the Department of Parasitology of the University of Colombo, and she led them for 17 years.[2][3][4] Mendis won the 1991 Chalmers Medal from the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and the 1993 Bailey K. Ashford Medal from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.[2][5]

In 1993, the labs of Mendis and Dyann Wirth published the first successful use of the electroporation method to insert new DNA sequence into a malaria cell, in this case Plasmodium gallinaceum.[6]

Mendis is considered to have been an "architect" of Sri Lanka's successful elimination of malaria, and often writes about how the country needs to actively maintain this status.[7][8][9] She continues to be a member of the WHO Malaria Policy Advisory Committee.[10]

References
  1. "Visakha OGA honours its distinguished Old Girls". www.sundaytimes.lk. Retrieved 2019-10-13.
  2. The NIH Record. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health. 2000.
  3. "PDRU – History | FOM". Retrieved 2019-10-13.
  4. "WHO | May you live in interesting times: malariologist reflects on elimination success". WHO. Archived from the original on June 23, 2018. Retrieved 2019-10-13.
  5. "American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene - MEDALS" (PDF). 2019. Retrieved 20 Dec 2019.
  6. Goonewardene, R; Daily, J; Kaslow, D; Sullivan, T J; Duffy, P; Carter, R; Mendis, K; Wirth, D (1993). "Transfection of the malaria parasite and expression of firefly luciferase". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 90 (11): 5234–5236. Bibcode:1993PNAS...90.5234G. doi:10.1073/pnas.90.11.5234. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 46690. PMID 8506371.
  7. Nafeel, Nushka. "Annihilation of the deadly parasite". Daily News. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
  8. Mendis, Kamini (2019-09-04). "Eliminating malaria should not be the end of vigilance". Nature. 573 (7772): 7. doi:10.1038/d41586-019-02598-1. PMID 31485061. S2CID 201815309.
  9. "Scientists in Pakistan and Sri Lanka bet their futures on China". www.nature.com. Retrieved 2021-12-22.
  10. "Becoming malaria-free by 2020". www.who.int. Retrieved 2019-10-13.


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