“Herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years!”. There is an increased recognition, and research conducted to validate the use of herbal medicinal products worldwide, paving a new era of treatment through therapeutic use of herbs. On this ground, a student team of KIU organized a webinar on “Research and Development in Herbal Medicine” to address the importance of herbal medicine in research and development through the guidance of KIU HEI-SL-Cell and KIU Faculty of Health Sciences, most notably to share the knowledge on commercializing a researched product and to provide a platform to gain more insight into herbal medicine. Further, it was purposed to open, probable opportunities in terms of research and uplift the spirit of early career researchers.
The webinar commenced on 27th February 2021, 2.00 p.m. onwards with more than 200 attendees. Dr. Kamal Perera, a Consultant Pharmacologist and a Senior lecturer at the Institute of Indigenous Medicine, University of Colombo, and Dr. Sudesh Senarathna, an Ayurvedic physician and Research Coordinator at Beam Hela Osu Lanka Pvt Ltd., featured as the two key speakers of the Webinar. Their willingness to share their thoughts, experiences and remarks, contributing their valuable time and effort was well highlighted and appreciated in the webinar. Many positive feedback and comments reached the webinar organizing committee from the attendees among whom were government, non-government, and foreign individuals as well.
The event was successfully held and organized by the students of the Faculty of Health Sciences: Vimukthi Asahara Samaranada, Praba Jalini Wijekumar, Jayani Dunukara and Kaveesha Ranasinghe (supporting student) along with Ms. Nirmani Samarakoon (Assistant HOD/Lecturer from Department of Biomedical Science, Faculty of Health Sciences) in collaboration with HEI-SL-Cell, KIU. The organizers are extending their gratitude to all who participated and supported to the webinar.