Channa Jayasumana
Channa Jayasumana is a Sri Lankan politician, Cabinet Minister and is a member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka for the Anuradhapura District. He belongs to the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna. He was the professor in Pharmacology at the Faculty of Medicine of Rajarata University of Sri Lanka before entered in to politics. He holds professional qualifications MBBS from University of Peradeniya, PhD and FRCP Edin. He has done extensive research on drinking water, occupational exposure to pesticides and its association with chronic kidney disease highly prevalent in rural farming communities. Together with his doctoral advisor, Sarath Gunatilake , Prof. Jayasumana was awarded the AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility in 2019 for this work, citing "challenging circumstances." He has authored 30 papers in indexed International journals. Further, He is a author of a chapter in Oxford text book of medicine. He was appointed state minister of Pharmaceutical Production, Supply and Regulation in 2020. Following the mass resignation of the Sri Lankan cabinet in the wake of the 2022 Sri Lankan protests, he was appointed as the Minister of Health by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa on 18 April 2022.