Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Barbara Lopes Cardozo is visiting Sri Lanka to conduct research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of war victims in the Northern Province from November 28 to December 1.
She is a founding member of Doctors Without Borders–Holland (MSF) and served in several countries. She has treated victims of natural and man-made disasters and won the Nobel Prize in 1999.
She is observing incidence and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder during her stay and will have several meetings with specialists in the field of Psychiatry and Community Medicine in Jaffna and will meet the Health Minister of the Northern Province. She will also deliver a lecture on ‘Public Health and Human Behaviour’.
A vast number of people from the Northern Province were innocent victims of violent clashes between government military forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) fighting for a separate homeland. During the 30-year war thousands of civilians died and many sustained life-long injuries physically and mentally. There are no details whether she will meet Colombo government officials.
Among the dozens of missions with direct on-the-ground involvement by Dr. Lopes Cardozo during a decade with the MSF – Holland, are the Armenian Earthquake, Armero (Colombia) Volcano disaster, Peru cholera epidemic, as well as aid to victims of violent conflict in Somalia, Uganda, Haiti, and Nicaragua.
In June this year Dr. Cardozo delivered Dr. Chesmal Siriwardhana Memorial Lecture providing an overview of the burden of mental health problems in complex humanitarian emergencies, including the mental health work that he had been undertaking in Sri Lanka in collaboration with Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Sri Lankan-born Dr. Siriwardhana was a leading academic in the field of global mental health, migration and ethics and a highly respected professional at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and previously Anglia Ruskin University and King’s College London.
He was knocked down by a double decker bus as he made his way home after a night out with friends. The 38-year-old, who had lived in London for more than eight years, was pronounced dead shortly after the crash at around 2am on Monday April 10 three days before the Sinhala New Year.
He had looked at the mental health needs of people affected by conflict, particularly in the northern Sri Lanka. Dr. Siriwardhaba came to the UK to study at King’s College London in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience as a master’s fellow in 2009 and obtained his PhD in Psychiatric Epidemiology in 2015.
