National Trust lecture: Healing knife by Dr. Goonetilleke
“Healing Knife’ will be the title of Dr. Gam in i Goonetilleke’s lecture at the Monthly Lecture Series of the National Trust - Sri Lanka at the HNB Auditorium, 22nd Floor, HNB Towers, 479 T. B. Jayah Mawatha, Colombo 10 on Thursday, January 30 at 6.30 p.m.
“My lecture will be an emotional rollercoaster relating personal and professional challenges faced by a surgeon in times of war and peace. My own personal struggles to adjust to a life with next to no comforts and learning to perform my duty with basic facilities and staff, the ups and downs, joys, sorrows and pitfalls of being a surgeon in a rural area will be highlighted,” Dr Goonetilleke says. He will talk of his several missions of mercy to wartorn Jaffna, to treat soldiers injured in combat and also to “Tiger land” to teach and examine medical students in Jaffna that were nerve- wracking, but yielded much benefit. The horrors of the ethnic conflict and treating an array of war injuries, saving lives and limb will be described.
Dr Goonetilleke retired from the post of the Senior Consultant Surgeon at the Sri Jayewardenapura General Hospital and Clinical Professor in Surgery for the Faculty of Medicine, General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University, Ratmalana, in October 2014. He volunteered his services to the armed forces in both civil and military hospitals. His knowledge and experience in surgery gathered over a period of 33 years has been the subjects of many publications, lectures, and orations delivered locally and internationally. He is the recipient of 13 medals awarded by the medical associations for his outstanding work and is the author of the book ‘In the Line of Duty’ — the life and times of a surgeon in war and peace was the recipient of the Josephian award for Excellence in 1994.
The HNB Sustainab i l i t y Foundation is the principal sponsor of the events of the National Trust – Sri Lanka. Further information can be obtained from the Trust Office Tel 2682730 / 0778081214 at the Post Graduate Institute of Archaeology, 407 Bauddhaloka Mawatha, Colombo 7. Those attending by vehicle are requested to provide the office with their vehicle no., if not given previously.