CSSL’s vision to make SL a surgical hub

Finding ways and means of serving the people of Sri Lanka better, is what Prof. Srinath Chandrasekera and his council are looking at, as he stands at the helm of the CSSL.

The biggest challenge is the COVID-19 pandemic which has led to a restriction in the delivery of surgical services and they are making every effort to sustain and enhance their services, he says.

Prof. Chandrasekera picks up a major concern of the CSSL, the need to bring down the large number of trauma cases including road traffic accidents and industrial, agricultural and domestic accidents. The most common cause of hospital admissions in all districts in the past 17 years has been trauma, with 3,000 deaths per year from road traffic accidents.

“We need a holistic approach not only medium but also longterm to prevent these accidents,” he says, pledging that the CSSL will work closely with the government, occupational and public health sectors and also the media.

Prof. Chandrasekera and his council, meanwhile, hope to take Sri Lanka’s excellent surgical services to the global platform. “This is our long-term vision.”

Sri Lanka as a surgical hub is what is being envisioned, so that after the next 50 years, the CSSL can tower above, as it is now doing – on the shoulders of giants of surgery who have gone before them.

It is with this on the horizon that the Embekke symbol, the Pe-kada (the drooping lotus that crowns the ornate columns), has been incorporated in the logo of the CSSL to epitomize that ‘Science meets Art even as the resonance of a gloried past nurtures the present stature of the college’.

“Like the Pe-kada, we stand on the shoulders of a surgical heritage spanning millennia. Much like the Pe-kada, the college is the Great Intermediary – the device that lets this great pillar of surgery branch out into the beams, the rafters and ultimately completes the roof that is surgical care in Sri Lanka,” says Prof. Chandrasekera, adding that the ‘Lotus and the Scissor’ symbolize the quest for excellence in education, innovation and healing.