Dr. Talduwa Gamage Chandrasoma Asoka Dias has been awarded with the Queen’s Service Medal for the services rendered to uplift health and serve the Sri Lankan community.

Dr. Asoka Dias has contributed to community health, particularly focusing on mental, social and spiritual wellbeing of the Sri Lankan community, since he migrated to New Zealand in 1997.

Dr. Dias led a fundraising initiative for the Sri Lanka Buddhist Temple from 2004 until the successful establishment of the temple in 2014. He provided leadership towards establishing new premises for the temple in 2008 and for its ongoing maintenance. For ten years, he has coordinated a monthly meditation programme at the temple, which has helped reduce mental stress, fatigue and anxiety and provide health benefits within the community. He helped re-establish the New Zealand Overseas Doctors Association in 1999, which has seen more than 250 qualified doctors from 32 countries engage in work in New Zealand. He has been a member of the United Sri Lanka Association in Auckland for more than 20 years, helping members with their physical and mental well-being through discussions, presentations and hands-on workshops. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he led the planning for the urgent delivery of High Flow Oxygen machines to Sri Lanka. Dr Dias spearheaded a campaign to vaccinate as many people as possible in the Sri Lankan community, using the Sinhalese language to improve communication and reach for the message.

He worked in  Mahamodra (Galle), Akuressa, Kataragama and Matara Hospitals. He was an assistant JMO in Colombo from 1993 to 1996 and left for New Zealand in 1997. He was born in Yakkalamulla and was an old boy from St. Aloysius College.