Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Dr Deepthi Jayasekara attended Ananda College, Colombo from 1970-1982. He was a College Prefect, a member of Ananda orchestra (Ananda Udawa) in vocals and violin, a Boy Scout and a member of English/Sinhalese debating teams. Having graduated in 1982 with highest Advanced level results 4 A’s, he received the prestigious Thomas Amarasuriya academic award and a Mahapola academic scholarship for medical school.
Dr Jayasekara graduated from the prestigious Colombo Medical Faculty, University of Colombo with honors in Human Physiology and pharmacology. He played music for the medical students’ band called “Medix” which topped Sri Lankan music charts many times. He subsequently completed his internship at National Hospital of Colombo in General Medicine and Surgery. Dr Jayasekara migrated to USA in 1995 to pursue a post-doc research fellowship in HIV and clinical pharmacology at UCSF (University of California, San Francisco). While conducting research and juggling a young family, he applied and got into an Internal Medicine residency at USC-Los Angeles County hospital in 1997. He pursued a fellowship in Infectious Diseases 2000-2002;, published and conducted research in HIV, Tuberculosis and CMV retinitis at USC.
Presently Dr Jayasekara works as a consultant physician and Infectious Disease specialist at Emanate Health hospitals (Queen of the Valley and Inter-community), Arcadia Methodist, San Dimas and Kindred hospitals. Additionally, he is in a partnership of multiple Infectious Disease doctors called Foothill Infectious Diseases Group and Infusion Center in Claremont, California. He also serves as a regular member of leadership committees and has been championing hospital protocols such as sepsis, pneumonia, Covid-19 vaccines and treatment protocols over 20 years. Dr Jayasekara and Foothill ID specialists have been involved in the care of over 25000 patients with Covid-19 per hospital statistics during the 6 waves of the current Covid pandemic. He was chosen to deliver the first ever educational webinar to the hospital staff on Covid-19 vaccines in Nov 2020 before the MRNA vaccines were rolled out. He’s currently the chair of Internal Medicine at Emanate hospitals and the chair of Infectious Diseases at Emanate and San Dimas Hospitals.
The Emanate health organization honored him with a prestigious award for the work he has done with the pandemic in June 2022. Dr Jayasekara has thus far authored 10 newspaper articles on Covid-19 in Los Angeles, providing much-needed insight of the ongoing Covid policy changes and new therapeutics and vaccines. A regular CME speaker for the doctors and hospital staff on various subjects related to ID, Dr Jayasekara has delivered over 100 Continuing Medical Education (CME)lectures on subjects like Sepsis, Covid-19, New antibiotics in the pipeline, HIV, Diabetic infections, Transplant-related infections, hospital-acquired infections and more recently Monkeypox 2022 epidemic. He is also on speaker panels of few pharmaceutical companies like Allergan, Melinta, AbbVie, Tetraphase pharmaceuticals on various new antibiotics and on advisory board of probiotic company, Ferring.
Dr Jayasekara is quite passionate about teaching his medical students from Western and Touro medical schools in California while serving as a clinical professor. He has published many scientific papers with those universities and Emanate hospitals especially during Covid period. Furthermore, he has delivered many academic lectures at various Sri Lankan organizations in Colombo such as Sri Lanka Medical Associatiom (SLMA), College of Physicians, College of Surgeons, College of Microbiologists, Faculty of Kotalawala Medical faculty, Nawaloka hospital critical care etc.
Dr Jayasekara is an active member of professional Sri Lankan organizations like SLMANA West, Ananda OBA West (ACOBA) and Sri Lanka Foundation and is currently serving on the boards (BOD)of those organizations. He served as the President of Ananda College Old Boys Association (ACOBA) West and Vice President of Sri Lanka Medical Association North America (SLMANA) West a few years ago. He is currently the Medical Director of Sri Lanka Foundation International, USA and has conducted many educational webinars on Evolution of Covid-19 pandemic, Covid vaccines, new Covid-treatments, CDC protocols etc. Spearheaded many charity projects related to Covid-19 pandemic including projects related to Colombo National hospital, IDH, and many outstation hospitals in Sri Lanka helping them in purchasing many equipment including much-needed ICU beds, ventilators, BIPAP and High Flow respiratory machines, surgical consumables etc. He also collaborated a landmark scientific paper with the National Science Foundation of Sri Lanka which helped Sri Lankan Covid task force during many waves of Covid pandemic that devastated the country.
Dr Jayasekara is quite passionate about travel, Cricket and Basketball and is also known in our comminity as a vocalist and a multi-instrumentalist (violin, Piano, Keyboards, and drums) playing for few bands like Medix, Heartbeat, Emanate Hospital band etc. He lives in Glendora, California with his wife Roshani and their 2 children Arindra and Avishka. Arindra is a second-year neurology resident and Avishka, a recent graduate from USC Neuroscience and health policy.
