The 31st Annual Session of the Sri Lanka Sexual Health and HIV Experts Forum will be held in Colombo from 29 to 31 October, bringing local and foreign specialists together two weeks after the Health Ministry’s own experts warned that infections are rising.

The inaugural ceremony is set for 6.30 p.m. on Thursday 29 October, under the patronage of Deputy Minister of Health Dr. Hansaka Wijemuni, the Daily Mirror reported at 4.43 p.m. on Tuesday.

Representatives of the British HIV Association, which is sponsoring the session, are expected to attend alongside Sri Lankan and foreign experts. The stated aim is to share knowledge and support the development of sexual health and HIV policy, in Sri Lanka and internationally.

The Health and Mass Media Ministry said the visiting and local experts would also be available to speak to media organisations, and invited newspapers, radio, television and online outlets to use them to raise public awareness of reproductive health and HIV. That invitation is unusual enough to be worth noting: the ministry is treating the conference as a public-information opportunity rather than a closed professional meeting.

Why the timing matters

The session lands in the middle of a run of official warnings about exactly these diseases — all of them delivered at Health Ministry briefings this month, and all attributed to the same specialist.

On 14 October, Consultant Venereologist Dr. Nimali Jayasuriya told a ministry briefing that reported HIV cases had risen since 2023 and were projected to keep rising through 2026, and said existing prevention programmes were insufficient. She attributed the setback to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic crisis, wider internet access, unsafe sexual practices and increasing drug use (Daily Mirror, 14 October).

The following day she gave figures for the related infections: around 1,500 syphilis cases a year, against 80 to 100 a year before 2021, with Hepatitis B cases doubling year on year (Daily Mirror, 15 October).

That is the backdrop against which a professional body convenes its 31st session. It also sits against a better record on one specific front: Sri Lanka has been certified by the WHO for eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and has pursued triple elimination of HIV, syphilis and Hepatitis B through maternity clinics.

One naming question

The filing calls the convening body the Sri Lanka Sexual Health and HIV Experts Forum. The ministry’s own October briefings identified Dr. Jayasuriya as President of the Sri Lanka College of Sexual Health and HIV Medicine (SLCoSHH). These are very likely the same organisation under two renderings — a college holding its annual session — but the filing does not say so, and this desk is not merging the two names on inference.

Not reported

The filing does not give a venue within Colombo, a programme, or the names of any speaker or office-holder of the forum. It does not say how many delegates are expected, what the session’s theme is, whether any policy announcement is planned, or what the British HIV Association’s sponsorship consists of. It does not say whether Dr. Jayasuriya — the specialist behind this month’s warnings — is involved.

This article is carried on a single source. A search of Ada Derana, NewsFirst, Island, Daily FT, Daily News, EconomyNext, Colombo Gazette, news.lk and the Sunday Times found no other newsroom reporting the session; the results were earlier Daily Mirror and Daily FT coverage of HIV trends, not of this event. One search result additionally asserted a specific hotel venue and a conference theme. Neither appears anywhere in the Daily Mirror page this report is based on, and neither could be traced to a datable filing, so both have been left out. They will be added if a newsroom publishes them.