Seneka Bibile

He entered the Medical College in Colombo, where he had a brilliant career, winning the gold medals for medicine and surgery, and obtained a first class honours degree in 1945.

He played the leading role in developing a rational pharmaceutical policy aimed at ensuring that impoverished people would get reasonable drugs at a low price.

The United Front Government of 1970 appointed Dr S.A. Wickremasinghe and Dr. Bibile to lead a commission of inquiry to investigate this issue and they recommended the establishment a national policy and of a state body to regularise the trade.

Subasinghe, the Cabinet Minister of Industries, appointed him founder chairman of the Sri Lanka State Pharmaceuticals Corporation (SPC).

The SPC channelled all imports of pharmaceuticals, calling for worldwide bulk tenders which were limited to the approved drugs listed in the national formulary.

Although his policy was watered down by the United National Party Government of 1977, which re-opened the doors to unrestricted imports, the SPC was never dissolved and continued to supply affordable drugs.

It is widely regarded in his home country of Sri Lanka that the threat he posed to the powerful drugs Multi-nationals may have had some bearing on his premature and mysterious death in 1977 while on a UN assignment in Guyana to introduce these policies there.

[4] See Wikileaks information on Dr Bibile's drug policy and the United States [5] He was a Trotskyist and a member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, becoming Treasurer of its Youth Leagues.

In the mid-1950s, he, together with Herbert Keuneman, 'Bonnie' Fernando, Anil and Jeanne Moonesinghe and other members of the radical intelligentsia founded Sri Lanka's first co-operative housing scheme, the Gothatuwa Building Society.