Consultant physician and nephrologist National Hospital Sri Lanka, director of the Postgraduate Institute of Medicine and senior professor of Medicine, head of the Department of Clinical Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo
He was appointed as a lecturer in medicine in the Department of Medicine under Professor Kumaradasa Rajasuriya in 1973. He obtained his MRCP after completing his postgraduate training in the UK, and he returned to Sri Lanka. He had one of the longest academic careers in the Sri Lankan university system.[7]
Sheriff collaborated with A. H. Sheriffdeen to set up the first transplant program in Sri Lanka in October 1985, and with the assistance of the Colombo University team, they accomplished the first kidney transplant performed in Sri Lanka.[8] Sheriff and Surendra Ramachandran pioneered the specialty of nephrology in Sri Lanka; nearly 1,000 transplants have been performed under Sheriff's supervision.[9] He was appointed as Professor of Medicine in 1990 and promoted eight years later to Senior Professor in Medicine in 1998.[7]
He is a member of the senior advisory board to SACTRC (South Asian Clinical Toxicology Research Collaboration)[10] with Nimal Senanayake, Ravindra Fernando and Janaka de Silva. He founded the OxCol (University of Oxford Colombo link) for studies on snake bites and yellow oleander poisoning. He was president of the Sri Lanka Medical Association, Ceylon College of Physicians,[11] Sri Lanka Association for Nephrology and Transplantation, SAARC Society of Nephrology, Urology and Transplant Surgery and the Founder President of the Hypertension Society in Sri Lanka in addition to being a founder of the Health Informatics Society in Sri Lanka [12] and a councilor of the International Society of Nephrology. He is an External Examiner for MRCP in UK & Chennai. He is the Ceylon College of Physicians Coordinator for MRCP Examinations in Sri Lanka. He was appointed as the President of Sri Lanka Medical Association in 2009.[13]
He is also the founder chairman of Western Infirmary Hospital in Colombo, a center known for renal disease care, dialysis and transplantation.[9][15] In 2011, he was rated as the most prolific scientist from Sri Lanka according to the Web of Science database.[16]
He retired from the University of Colombo on September 30, 2014, after rendering 41 years of service.[9]
The titular prestigious honour Vidya Jyothi was conferred upon him by the Government of Sri Lanka in 1993 in recognition of his contribution to nephrology, dialysis and transplantation in Sri Lanka. He also received a Lion International Merit Award.[17]
