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Consultant Microbiologist, Sri Jayewardenepura General Hospital

Honorary Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Medicine,University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda

Dr. Kushlani Jayatilleke (MBBS, Postgraduate Diploma and MD in Medical Microbiology from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka) is a Consultant Microbiologist at Sri Jayewardenepura General Hospital in Nugegoda, Sri Lanka. Practising as a consultant microbiologist since 2003, she previously worked as an Honorary Specialist Registrar at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and as a Locum Specialist Registrar at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust from 2003 to 2004. She received the President’s Award for Scientific Publication for research published in 2012 from the President of Sri Lanka and holds an Honorary Fellowship of the Sri Lanka College of Microbiologists, having served as its President for 2017-2018 and Joint Honorary Secretary for 2006/2007, 2007/2008, and 2009/2010. She also delivered the Siri Wickremasinghe Oration 2022 and served as assistant secretary of the Sri Lanka Medical Association in 2015-2016 and chairperson of its Expert Committee on Healthcare Quality and Safety in 2017 and 2018.

At the national level, Dr. Jayatilleke is a pioneer in Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) surveillance, starting WHONET software usage in Sri Lanka and introducing it to local clinical microbiologists through voluntary workshops. She was one of five consultant microbiologists who drafted the National Action Plan for combating AMR, contributed to the 2017 National Strategic Plan for AMR, and is a member of NAC-AMR, the National Action Plan Implementation Strengthening Team, and the technical steering committee for National Laboratory Based surveillance of antibiotic resistance. She helped develop the National Antimicrobial Stewardship Programme, AWaRe guidelines, and the National Policy for Infection Prevention and Control (IPC). Additionally, she is a trained ISO 15189 medical laboratory accreditation assessor, a member of the technical advisory committees and expert committees of the Sri Lanka Accreditation Board, a member of the editorial board of the Sri Lanka Journal of Infectious Diseases, a Reviewer Editor of the Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials, and serves on the Ethics Review Committee of Sri Jayewardenepura General Hospital.

Internationally, Dr. Jayatilleke serves as a member of the WHO Technical Steering Group for the IPC Global Unit and the Technical Advisory Group on AWaRe, alongside contributing to multiple WHO Guideline Development Groups for IPC core components, carbapenem-resistant pathogens, monkeypox, acute respiratory infections, and intravascular catheter infection prevention. She is also a member of the WHO expert committees for hand hygiene research agendas and the revision of critically important antimicrobials, co-authored a chapter in a National University of Singapore Press publication, acts as the local network organiser for ANSORP, and chairs the Board of Study in Microbiology at the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo. With 45 peer-reviewed and other publications, she is an active speaker at international forums, including ESCMID Global and webinars for The Royal College of Pathologists.