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Sri Lanka is in crisis – and so are its scientists

Published

4 years ago

2022/07/17

Immunologist Neelika Malavige’s study of a massive dengue-fever outbreak is being hampered by fuel shortages and power cuts, says a report by the Nature journal. It said: Sri Lanka is in a state of crisis. With the country in vast amounts of debt and inflation sky-high, the government doesn’t have enough money to import fuel, exacerbating food shortages. Last weekend, protesters marched into the official residence of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, demanding his immediate resignation. He has since fled the country.

More than six million Sri Lankans — three in every ten households — don’t know where to get their next meal, according to the World Food Programme. And after wave after wave of COVID-19, Sri Lanka is now experiencing a massive outbreak of dengue fever.Neelika Malavige is an immunologist at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura in Colombo who has studied dengue for more than a decade. She spoke to Nature about the situation in Sri Lanka and how it is affecting her work.

Asked to explain the prevailing situation in Sri Lanka at the moment, Prof Malavige said: Sri Lanka does not have sufficient foreign reserves to import fuel, which has affected every sector. Schools are closed indefinitely. The government has declared Fridays a holiday for all public institutions except essential services. Patients can’t get to hospitals and neither can doctors, nurses and other medical staff. On top of that, we are running out of essential medicines and have daily power outages of more than three hours.

There is also not enough food, partly driven by the government’s decision in May 2021 to impose a nationwide ban on chemical fertilizers, which drastically cut agricultural production and drove up the price of staple foods such as rice and vegetables. Fishing boats don’t have diesel or kerosene to catch fish, an important source of protein. Inflation exceeds 50%, pushing many people into a situation where they can’t afford to eat three meals a day.

We also have close to 41,000 confirmed cases of dengue this year, which exceeds the number we had in the whole of last year.Most people with dengue have mild disease, but some 15% of people who arrive at hospitals go on to develop dengue haemorrhagic fever, which causes severe bleeding and can be fatal. There is no way to predict in the early stages of an infection whether someone will develop severe dengue, which means that people have to visit the hospital daily for blood tests and monitoring to pick up the signs as early as possible. That’s a huge strain on the health-care system.

We are trying to identify biomarkers that can help determine if someone will go on to develop severe dengue. We are also trying to determine the immune response associated with protection from severe disease, which is still unknown for dengue.In addition, my lab is looking for drugs that can be repurposed to treat dengue — for which there is no safe and effective vaccine — and has completed several clinical trials. We are recruiting and collecting samples for a study with a group in Latin America to compare the epidemiology and pathogenesis of dengue in the two regions. At the same time, we are trying to sequence and isolate the dengue virus to understand what is driving the current outbreak.

Prof Malavige said that her work has been affected by the prevailing crisis. “There are a lot of things we are not doing that we could have done last year. Recruiting participants and collecting samples from the hospital, which is 16 kilometres from our lab, is especially difficult right now because of the lack of fuel. A lot of people have started cycling, including myself, but cycling between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. in temperatures above 33 °C, with 80–90% humidity, under the scorching Sun, is a nightmare.

The power cuts and lack of fuel for back-up electricity generators mean that we cannot use equipment such as our Illumina genomic-sequencing machine, which needs to run continuously for at least 24 hours. Instead, we rely on nanopore sequencing, which can run on a powerful battery. Nanopore sequencing is easier and cheaper and gives better coverage, but has slightly lower accuracy rates. Last week, we managed to sequence a few samples of SARS-CoV-2, because cases have slowly started to rise this month.

Due to the foreign-reserve crisis, we cannot buy reagents for some of our dengue experiments, so we are freezing many samples for when we can get the reagents. But in March, we had power cuts lasting for up to 13 hours, so we lost samples stored in some of our freezers.Some procedures, such as flow cytometry, have to be done on fresh samples, so we have to work around the planned power cuts and restricted opening hours at the university to conduct those experiments. It’s very challenging. I spend most of my time troubleshooting.

The inflation has driven up the price of many essential lab items. For example, a bottle of the cell-culture medium we use was 4,000 Sri Lankan rupees (US$11 at current conversion rates) in 2021, and is now 36,000 rupees. I’m still just scratching my head trying to figure out how to solve this problem. Can we get the medium at a cheaper rate from manufacturers in China? Immune cells are very sensitive, so they might not grow as well in the new medium.Our staff are also severely affected by the rising food prices. An egg now costs 50 rupees, up from 17 in 2020. The price of rice, lentils and coconut oil has also shot up. My research assistants and PhD students are really struggling to make ends meet.

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Presidential pardons: Govt. studying Justice Thurairaja’s recommendations – Minister

Published

1 hour ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Thurairaja / Harshana

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara said yesterday that the Cabinet was studying a set of recommendations made by a Committee, led by retired Supreme Court judge Sithambarampillai Thurairaja, PC, regarding a systematic, fair and transparent mechanism for granting presidential pardons to convicted prison inmates.

Attorney-at-law Nanayakkara said so when The Island raised the issue in the wake of the ongoing controversy over prison authorities compelling General Secretary of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) Ven. Galadodaaththe Gnanasara to wear civilian attire when produced in court.

The Minister declined to elaborate but said the Cabinet of Ministers was yet to reach consensus on the recommendations. The NPP government, on 25 June 2025, appointed Thurairaja’s committee to study the provisions of the Article 34(1) of the Constitution, along with other statutory acts and judicial rulings.

Justice Thurairaja handed over his report to Justice and National Integration Ministry Secretary Ayesha Jinasena, PC.

The other members of the Committee were Deputy Minister of Mass Media Dr. Kaushalya Ariyarathne, Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and National Integration Piyumanthi Peiris, Additional Solicitor General Nerin Pulle, Senior Deputy Inspector General of Police (SDIG) Legal Asanga Karawita, Chairperson of the Bureau of Rehabilitation Professor Wasantha Subasinghe, Specialist Dr. Chiththahari Abayanayake, former Acting Commissioner of Prisons Nishan Dhanasinghe, Acting Commissioner General of Prisons Prasad Hemantha Kumara, Senior Assistant Secretary (Legal) to the Ministry of Justice and National Integration Roshani Hettige, and Senior Assistant Secretary to the Ministry of Justice and National Integration Chandima Welikala.

The government called for guidelines regarding presidential pardon over a year before the Supreme Court rescinded, in September this year, the presidential pardon granted by Maithripala Sirisena to Ven Gnanasara serving a six-term of rigorous imprisonment for contempt of court. That pardon was granted in May 2019, the third controversial release by Sirisena during his presidency.

President Sirisena pardoned an ex-LTTE terrorist and also the Royal Park murderer Don Shramantha Jude Anthony Jayamaha, in 2016 and 2019, respectively. The Supreme Court, in June 2024, annulled the pardon granted to Jayamaha and ordered his arrest though he still remains free having fled overseas no sooner he was granted the pardon.

News

Mahinda and Shiranthi hospitalised

Published

1 hour ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was admitted to a private hospital yesterday morning (12).

Meanwhile, former First Lady Shiranthi Rajapaksa, who is currently in remand custody at Welikada Prison, has been admitted to the Cardiology Unit of the National Hospital in Colombo.

News

Monks must be allowed to wear robes when produced in court: Mahanayake Theras

Published

1 hour ago

2026/10/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

SJB MPs meeting Most Venerable Tibbotuwawe Sri Sumangala Mahanayake Thera of the Malwathu Chapter

“JVP did not bomb Dalada Maligawa; it seized weapons from security personnel stationed there”

By S. K. Samaranayake

Most Venerable Tibbotuwawe Sri Sumangala Mahanayake Thera of the Malwathu Chapter yesterday said the President has assured that a final decision on new prison regulations would be taken withn two weeks and until then whenever bhikkhus were produced before court, they must be allowed to wear robes. The monk said the Mahanayaka Thera has written to the Commissioner General of Prisons about their decision.

The Mahanayake Thera said so when SJB MPs, led by General Secretary Ranjith Madduma Bandara, paid a courtesy call on him.

During the meeting, the Mahanayake Thera expressed the following views:

“Currently, a massive campaign is underway on social media to insult and disrespect the Maha Sangha. Some individuals carrying out these attacks are not linked to any political party. We expected the government to intervene and completely put an end to this, which is entirely possible. Laws should be introduced to control this. The insults directed at monks must be stopped immediately. We cannot accept these acts, no matter who commits them. We even saw fabricated images circulated on social media depicting the President in robes and monks in lay attire. Such disrespect is completely unacceptable and must be curbed.

“We also know that some individuals currently representing Parliament have past ties to the Sasana. All we ask is for the mudslinging and insults targeting monks to be halted immediately. Certain elements continue to spread falsehoods about the government. Before this administration came to power, they claimed temples were finished, Buddhism was over, and the Perahera wouldn’t take place. But didn’t they just conduct the Kandy Perahera brilliantly?

“Various people are even complaining about the Casket (Karanduwa) of the Dalada Maligawa. In particular, we saw former Diyawadana Nilame Niranjan Wijeratne criticising the matter. Much of what he said was false. During his tenure, the previous casket was coated in lacquer, which nobody talks about. Replacing the old brass casket with a golden casket is a very commendable step what is wrong with that? Just as items from royal eras are retired and modern equivalents are put to use, the older casket has been given due respect and securely housed. There is no issue there. Some people claim the JVP bombed the Maligawa too. Nothing of the sort happened; it was LTTE terrorists who bombed the temple. The JVP merely seized weapons from the security personnel stationed there.”

Meanwhile, speaking during the visit, SJB General Secretary Ranjith Madduma Bandara and other parliamentarians charged that the current administration is laying the groundwork to turn the country into a secular state.

“It is impossible to introduce new laws for monks within two weeks; it takes much longer,” Bandara noted. “The President has the authority to issue an interim directive that any monk presented to court must appear in robes, but he chooses not to do so because he does not want to. Everyone who speaks out against this is targeted and smeared on social media, driven by a network of 2,000 to 3,000 social media operators tied to the government who attack and insult me. Even during the case of Father Mathew Peiris, who committed murder, his clerical cassock was not stripped. Inside the prison religious leaders were respected.

“The public base of this current government is rapidly eroding as a result of their actions, which is why they are attempting to strike at Buddhism to secure minority votes. Any government is constitutionally bound to protect the Buddha Sasana. We will not allow them to destroy Buddhism and turn this country secular; we will defend Buddhism to the very last, and all Sri Lankans must step forward for this cause.”

Following their meeting at the Malwathu Chapter, the delegation proceeded to the Asgiri Mahavihara, where they met the Mahanayake Thera of the Asgiri Chapter, Most Venerable Warakagoda Sri Gnanaratana Mahanayake Thera, and Anunayake Venerable Narampanaye Sri Ananda Thera to brief them on the current situation.

The delegation included SJB Parliamentarians Ranjith Madduma Bandara, Kins Nelson, Sujeewa Senasinghe, A.C. Alahapperuma, Rohana Bandara, Suranga Ratnayake, Rohini Kaviratne, Chandrani Kirielle, alongside prominent figures such as Lakshman Kiriella, Wasantha Yapa Bandara, Ranjith Aluwihare, and Professor Upul Dissanayake.