The Safe Bottle Lamp Foundation

The Founder

Dr. Godakumbura qualified as a doctor from the Colombo Medical School in 1964. His interest in the health of the people developed when he was still a medical student. In 1963, he started contributing articles to newspapers and doing radio programs on health topics (There was no television in the country then). Later, in 1971, he wrote a book in Sinhala entitled ‘A Doctor Speaks’, for which he received a literary award from the government. Three Deans of the Colombo University highly commended it, and it was also recommended as a library book for schools by the Director General of Education.

He qualified as a surgeon in the following year (1972), while on study leave in the UK. After returning to the island in 1973, he worked as a surgeon in several government hospitals. During this time, he was appalled by the extreme misery that unsafe kerosene lamps were causing to unsuspecting people who did not have the ‘luxury’ of electricity in their homes. That prompted him to launch the ‘Safe Bottle Lamp Project’ in 1992, now known internationally too following the wide publicity it got in the international media after winning the prestigious Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1998. TIME, Newsweek, National Geographic, Asiaweek, Reader’s Digest, Science and Nature, Le Figaro and Business Times of Singapore are among the many magazines and newspapers that gave that publicity. In addition, CNN telecast a documentary on his work that was videoed by a TV crew from the UK, and the Voice of America broadcast a live interview with Dr Godakumbura. When he got the Rolex prize money he immediately formed the ‘Safe Bottle Lamp Foundation’ that he heads to date, after working single handedly during the previous six years.

Rolex Watch Company gives five main awards every two years. There had been a total of 2600 entries in the year in which Dr. Godakumbura received the award, which he won in the ‘Science and Medicine’ category. He and an Indian national are the only two persons in South Asia among the 50 Rolex laureates to date. Five years later, he got a grant for his project from the Lindbergh Foundation, whose grant program “enjoys excellent reputation among the scientific community and the public sector for supporting exceptional high quality projects and dedicated researchers”. When Dr. Godakumbura received one of their seven grants in 2003, his project was ‘in good company’; four were given to projects from four American Universities and one to a body called ‘Architectural Applications’, also in the USA. The other was given to a project from the Russian Academy of Sciences. The Lindbergh Foundation later appointed Dr. Godakumbura to its Grants Technical Review Committee. He also won a Reader’s Digest Award called ‘Hero for Today’ in 2000, and three Sri Lankan Awards, viz, Presidential, Vidyajyothi and Sarvodaya. The Sri Lankan life style magazine ‘esteem’ named him as one of the ‘Icons of Sri Lanka in the 20th century’.

Recognizing the importance of his burn prevention work, the Ministry of Health appointed him to the National Committee on Prevention of Injuries in 1995, and the International Society for Burn Injuries (ISBI) to its Prevention Committee in 2001. His work did not fail to get the attention of the WHO too. In 2007, the WHO invited him to two consultation meetings. One was held in Geneva to prepare the document ‘A WHO PLAN – BURN PREVENTION AND CARE’, which was published in April 2008. The other was held in Manila to prepare the ‘WORLD REPORT ON CHILD AND ADOLESCENT INJURY PREVENTION’, to be published in November 2008. It will also contain a box written by him on ‘Safe Kerosene Lamps’. He has made presentations on his work in eleven International Medical Congresses.

The journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries ‘BURNS’ carries a 2 part - 17 page article entitled ‘BURNS AND FIRES FROM NON ELECTRIC DOMESTIC APPLIANCES IN LOW AND MIDDLE INCOME COUNTRIES’ in its May 2008 issue, written jointly by the Chairman of the Prevention Committee of the ISBI, Prof Michael Peck, Dr. Godakumbura and three other authors from South Africa and India.

Realizing that there is no book yet on injuries in Sri Lanka even though they account for a third of all hospital admissions in every country, he made use of what he learned at the two WHO consultation meetings to write a book in Sinhala on the ‘PREVENTION OF CHILD AND ADOLESCENT INJURIES’. It is awaiting publication.

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