The convent girl who’s taken up the SLMA mantle
In a ‘rare’ class is Professor Aurelia Jennifer Perera — the 8th of the fairer sex among 118 Presidents of the prestigious Sri Lanka Medical Association (SLMA) and 4th among 15 Deans of the Medical Faculty of the University of Colombo.
Prof. Perera: Her conscience guides her
It is during an interview sandwiched between numerous meetings at both these august institutions that petite Prof. Perera gives a glimpse of who she is and how she manages her role as a wife, mother, teacher, administrator, colleague, relative and friend. The role of wife and mother is played across continents – for her husband is attached to the International Medical University in Malaysia, her eldest daughter is in Australia, her second daughter in England, with her son based in Sri Lanka.
Handpicked and nominated as the 118th President of the 128-year-old SLMA, by those who have occupied this chair of the oldest national organisation of doctors in Asia and Australasia, Prof. Perera took over the mantle from her predecessor, Dr Palitha Abeykoon, on January 3.
However, an indication of the esteem with which 60-year-old Prof. Perera is held comes before that. On December 4, the Colombo Faculty of Medicine Teachers’ Association, struck work in a rare precedent. An earlier strike was in 1993 over a salary issue and last year’s was due to “a violation of our right to select the person we need as the Dean”.
For, after Prof. Perera had been unanimously elected as Dean by the 140-member Medical Faculty Board at a special meeting on October 21, as is customary, the Colombo University authorities had been dragging their feet to honour the election. Soon after the strike, however, they appointed her Acting Dean to take up the post of Dean within three months, the deadline being March 4.
“What did the Medical Faculty Board see in me to come up with such a unanimous decision,” Prof. Perera had questioned herself, she tells us during the interview, without hesitation replying: “I have acted in keeping with my conscience.”
While laughingly admitting what she believes to be a “weakness”, the fact that she is unable to deal with ambiguity, she says that she always speaks for what she feels is right and refuses to comply with what she feels is wrong.
Another strength that Prof. Perera thinks propelled her to the very top of her profession is her participation in all activities within these two institutions. “I didn’t confine myself only to teaching at the Medical Faculty but was very much a part of the social and cultural activities.”
She journeys down the corridors of time to her childhood to explain the core values which have always made her listen to her conscience and do the right thing.
Ensconced in the Dean’s chair which seems too big for her, there is a moment of banter when, like most busy women with numerous tasks, she rummages through her handbag to find a comb. She has just had several meetings at the SLMA down Wijerama Mawatha and arrived at the Medical Faculty on Kynsey Road slightly dishevelled. The search for the comb is futile. Her bag has lots of official documents but no comb.
The milestones along memory lane flow forth – third in a family of seven children, her father Terence Karunanayake worked at Baurs while her mother, Bridget, looked after their home. The initial education was at Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya, after which, from Grade 5 to the Advanced Level (AL) it was at Holy Cross College, Gampaha, being driven to school and back by her maternal grandfather in his Morris Oxford car from Dalugama, Kelaniya. It was a carefree life and she was an all-rounder managing her studies and also playing netball.
The strong daughter-father bond is obvious as she relates how Thaththa encouraged all seven children to dream big and strive to go in for higher studies. He was the sole breadwinner but attended all the parent-teacher meetings, unlike the norm where it is the mother who does so.
As a youngster, she never aspired to become a doctor, for she was intent on following a different vocation. With many role models in the nuns whom she saw day in, day out, she too hoped to follow in their footsteps.
It was while she was in the AL class and holding down the duties of the Head Prefect that she had a change of mind to go in for another calling where she would be of more service to the public.
And so it was that in 1974, she entered the Colombo Medical Faculty “with hardly any tuition”, the first to do so from Holy Cross College at that time.
The Karunanayake family then moved to Nawala, renting a house there, for all seven children (three brothers and four sisters) born within a span of seven years, were at different stages of their education.
From sheltered convents to the Medical Faculty, a different vista opened out to Prof. Perera, with romance also coming into the equation when Joachim Perera (better known as Joe) who was two years her senior showed a keener interest in singling her out for friendly ragging.
Her leadership qualities, the foundation for which had been laid at school, also came to the fore, with Prof. Perera being picked by her batch in 1976 to take up the sole seat allocated to a woman on the Block Committee.
She reminisces how during her second MB examination, to earn a little extra pocket money, she worked as a sales person at Hirdaramanis in Fort, during holidays, meeting so many people who enriched her life.
Participating, meanwhile, in many activities at the Medical Faculty, the romance between Jenny and
Joe blossomed, while working for the Catholic Students’ Society, she as Secretary and he as President.
The rest is history – passing out with 2nd Class Honours, internship at the Lady Ridgeway Hospital for Children and the Castle Street Women’s Hospital; joining the Medical Faculty as a Lecturer as Joe was already there; marrying soon after; and taking up microbiology as her speciality as “it had a lot of scope and I was not interested in clinical work but more in research”.
Ssoon after her final examinations, her father had died of a heart attack, a time when advanced life-saving techniques such as bypasses were not available, she says with sadness.
Explaining that she and Joe quickly got onto their post-graduate studies, she relives the long days and the longer nights when they juggled their duties — teaching medical students, bringing up their two daughters (the son was born much later), running a home and studying for their own examinations.
Prof. Perera pays tribute to her in-laws, Basil and Rose Perera (Joe is an only-child) with whom they lived as a newly-married couple and who helped them look after their two girls. “The care and love they showered on our daughters and how they looked after them cannot be replaced. You cannot get that from a crèche,” she says.
Sharp at 4.30 in the evening, her in-laws would hand over the two girls and the young couple would be on their own. Nights were on a shift-basis, she laughs, with Joe being a tremendous help, cradling one or the other little one on his legs and feet and rocking her to sleep, while poring over his books.
As she takes over the leadership of both the SLMA and the Medical Faculty, the years of toil have paid off, not only in her official life but also her personal one.
Now daughter Prashanthi, 33, is a doctor, Niroshi, 31, a top manager for a multinational company and “malli” Nishantha, 23, is working for a company in Sri Lanka. What’s more, Prof. Perera has an eight-month-old grandson, Kayesh, whom she loves to visit in England, while the family has a pact that wherever their careers may take them, they will meet up for Christmas and spend time together for a month.
Looking back on her journey up the ladder from Lecturer; Senior Lecturer; post-graduate studies at the Clinical Research Centre in Middlesex, UK; Associate Professor; Professor; Chair of the Department of Microbiology; and finally Senior Professor of Microbiology, she believes she has given of her best and will give of her best in whatever she undertakes. All this, while during her precious leisure time she “sews and sews” even all her saree blouses and indulges in cross-stitch and patchwork, displaying her talents on the walls of her home.
While she seeks God’s guidance in everything that she does, Prof. Perera says that every evening she reflects on the day gone by whether she has done anything wrong, whether she could have done it better and whether she has spoken too harshly to anyone even when she had to correct them.
“Next day, I won’t go down that pathway,” adds Prof. Perera.
| Prof. Perera’s 3Cs for better healthcare Soon after her induction as SLMA President, Prof. Perera has set up 10 Action Committees using the talents and strengths of the 44-member SLMA Council to carry forward her vision for the year. With Prof. Perera’s theme being ‘Connect, communicate, collaborate for improved health and healthcare’, in her Presidential address she highlighted the current challenges and referred to the positive initiatives by the Health Ministry in ensuring universal coverage and patient-centred care. She also focused on evidence-based strategies available to improve the health of a population through health leadership, inter-professional team work, multi-stakeholder involvement through patient engagement, public-private partnerships and advocacy in policy related to health. “We need to focus on developing optimally functional inter-professional teams in our health institutions. They become more responsive to changes, both in immediate patient-care and the health system as a whole. More efficient work output has been reported when people work in teams due to appropriate distribution of tasks. Service delivery and resource utilization tend to be more efficient. Research has also shown that patients are more satisfied and patient safety is ensured. Both the health care team and the patients experience less stress when members of the team are working toward coordinated goals.” At the Medical Faculty, meanwhile, it is an open-door policy that Prof. Perera will follow. “Anyone, be it a student or a staff member, minor employee or top Professor, can come to me directly.” |