History

The Department of Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine of the Ruhuna University College was established in 1978. It was initially located in Mahamodara Hospital premises in an old hospital building along with other three clinical departments. The founder Professor of Medicine was Professor Jayantha Hettiarachchi and the academic staff consisted of two senior lecturers. Both were seconded posts from the Ministry of Health, and they were Dr PL. Ariyananda and Dr Sarath Gamini de silva. Two years later, Dr PL Ariyananda remained as the permanent senior lecturer and Dr Sarath Gamini Silva left and re-joined the Health Ministry. Prof Hettiarachchi left the country during the 89/90 period and Professor WAS de Silva was appointed as the second Chair Professor in 1991. After his retirement in 1997, Prof PL Ariyananda became the third Chair Professor and served till 2012. Prof MR Mohideen took over as the fourth Chair Professor of Medicine until his resignation
in 2014 and Prof Sarath Lekamwasam has been the incumbent Chair Professor since then. With the establishment of the new Faculty buildings, office premises of the Department of Medicine were shifted to Karapitiya in1983. Since there was no dedicated space for the Medicine Department, it was temporarily located in the Department of Parasitology. New clinical block was built later in 2000 and along with all clinical departments temporarily located in different pre and paraclinical department premises were permanently located in the current clinical block in 2002/3.