Medicine and Me: Living with Behçet's

Dr Rohan D Situnayake MBChB (Birm) MSc Warwick FRCP is a consultant rheumatologist, with previous leadership positions including roles as Deputy and Medical Director for the Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust and is currently Clinical Lead and Director Birmingham National Centre of Excellence for Behçets Disease from 2013 to the present. He has leadership expertise in clinical innovation and transformation and remains an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer University of Birmingham Academic Department of Rheumatology. 

In his clinical role he is a consultant rheumatologist practising in general rheumatology but with a specific interest in inflammatory arthritis, connective tissue disease and the impact of race/genetics on disease expression/outcome having been at the Trust since 1990.  He also runs a variety of clinics for patients with connective tissue disease (including systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma and overlap syndromes), osteoporosis and fibromyalgia. 

As a Medical Director he has contributed towards the planning of a new hospital, reconfiguration of hospital services particularly with respect to medical staffing and implementation of effective systems for clinical governance, job planning and appraisal. These skills have been applied to create a ‘one-stop, multi-disciplinary solution shop’ approach to the diagnosis and management of Behcet’s. He has ongoing research interests in the epidemiology and clinical phenotypes of Behcet’s and clinical trials of biological treatment

Professor Dorian Haskard obtained his first degree in physiology at the University of Oxford and then moved to the Middlesex Hospital Medical School for clinical training. He developed his interest in vascular inflammation as a Fellow with Dr Morris Ziff at UT Southwestern Medical School in Dallas from 1984-1986.  In 1987 he was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship to develop his own laboratory at the UMDS, Guy’s Hospital.

He joined the Royal Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital as Senior Lecturer in the Department of Medicine in 1990. In October 1995 he was appointed to a Personal Chair in Rheumatology and to the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Sir John McMichael Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, which he occupied until 2016.

He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001. He has held a number of senior administrative positions at Imperial College London, including Head of the Section of Vascular Science and Head of the Division of Cardiovascular Clinical Science within the National Heart and Lung Institute, and Head of Immunology and Inflammation within the Department of Medicine. 

He currently convenes the Imperial College Network of Excellence in Vascular Science and serves as a College Consul for the Faculty of Medicine. His research is focused on understanding the biological basis of atherosclerosis and vascular inflammation. He has a long-standing interest in Behçet’s Disease and is currently President of the International Society for Behçet’s Disease. 

Professor Fortune is Professor of Medicine in relation to Oral Health and Head of the Centre for Clinical and Diagnostic Oral Sciences, and the Director of the Behçet’s Centre of Excellence in London, having led the bid to establish them in 2016.

Graduating in both Dentistry and Medicine from University College, University of London, she obtained her PhD in 1992, and listed on the specialist register for Oral Medicine in Dentistry (GDC), and Immunology in Medicine (GMC). Appointed Senior Lecturer in Immunology and Honorary Consultant in Oral Medicine at UMDS (Guys and St Thomas Hospital), in 1998 she was conferred the title of Professor of Oral Medicine at Leeds University. Further appointments include President of the British Society of Oral Medicine in 2007, Dean and Head and Institute Director of Dentistry for Dentistry at Barts and The London between 2007-2013, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 2009, President of Odontology section of the Royal Society of Medicine in 2011 and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians 2017.

Championing wider access for underrepresented groups in education and health nationally and internationally she was appointed to the Advisory Board member of Mosaic in 2016 whose mission is to support disadvantaged children and young people from deprived communities in the UK.

Professor Fortune's main research focus is epithelial biology, including mucosal disease and oral cancer, on which she has published extensively. Teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate level, her expertise is in curriculum development, assessment methodology and quality assurance; chairing the RCS committee and instrumental in the reintroduction of the LDS RCSeng and a member of UK HEAC.

She has been recognised as the top five most influential Muslim women in the Guardian’s society segment, awarded a CBE for services to dentistry in 2004 and the Colyer Gold Medal in 2012 for teaching, research and clinical excellence.

Robert is a clinical academic rheumatologist. Qualifying in Medicine in London, he earned his PhD at Oxford, moved to Harvard to continue his research and returned to the UK to establish a new academic rheumatology group in Liverpool.

He recently moved his academic affiliation to Edge Hill University, the newest UK medical school in the UK, to help train doctors from less privileged backgrounds. Robert’s research focuses on inflammatory rheumatological and autoimmune diseases, from bench to bedside. He has published extensively and holds major national grants. His group is designated European Centre of Excellence for Rheumatology research. Robert advises the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, is Past Editor of Rheumatology and lectures extensively internationally on his work.

Clinical service is a crucial part of his role. Robert is Director of the Liverpool Centre of Excellence for Behçet’s syndrome, leading national trials evaluating optimal therapy for this condition, as well as caring for patients. He has extensive experience in managing hard-to-treat rheumatological diseases and in delivering therapy with both standard and targeted drugs. He also has a special interest in helping lead the development of rheumatology in Sub-Saharan Africa.