Dr Kamini Mendis

Dr Mendis is an independent consultant on malaria and tropical medicine, having retired from WHO in October 2010 where she was Coordinator of Malaria Treatment and Malaria Elimination. She began her career as a clinician and moved to research on immunology and vaccine development in malaria, and then onto a wide range of fields in the areas of immunology, epidemiology, clinical studies, pathogenesis, and disease control in malaria.

In 1980, Dr Mendis founded the Malaria Research Centre at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and a postgraduate training programme in research, supervising many PhD and MSc students and building a network of young scientists in Sri Lanka. She continued academic pursuits in Sri Lanka as a Professor in Parasitology until 1997 when she left for Geneva. She has made several original contributions to scientific knowledge on malaria. Her work on malaria research has been honoured by national and international awards.

In Geneva, she helped establish the Global Forum for Health Research and then served in the Transition Secretariat of the then Director-general-elect of WHO. She was instrumental in the planning and launch of the Global Roll Back Malaria Initiative in 1998 and then headed the component on treatment and elimination of malaria at the WHO Global Malaria Programme where she was engaged in global efforts to reduce the burden of malaria.

Dr Mendis is currently engaged in malaria control and elimination efforts in Asia and has conducted several national reviews of malaria control programmes in countries in Asia. She is a member of the Technical Advisory Group on Malaria in Sri Lanka which supported the country to achieve WHO certification of malaria elimination. She serves as a malaria adviser to international funding agencies and research councils, and as a member of several international and regional expert committees on malaria including serving on the WHO Malaria Policy advisory Group.