From Mr P. V. Rollason, MRPharmS
SIR,-I have read with great interest the recent series of articles by Dr L. Goodyer on travel medicine, especially those concerned with tropical diseases (PJ, May 27, p812). It is indeed encouraging to find someone who gives such a reasonable practical approach to such a subject. I have been particularly impressed with his down-to-earth approach. So often, writers on tropical medicine either supply masses of academic material, which is of little value to holidaymakers or even local residents and serves to scare the daylights out of them, or else they talk about such matters with little or no practical experience of the areas and the diseases concerned.
I am very much concerned with what is doubtless the major tropical disease problem worldwide - malaria. It might be of interest to your readers to know that within the International Pharmaceutical Federation we have now established a malaria working group dedicated to collating informative material from as many sources as possible so as to make it easily available to pharmacists. This is based on the principle that the pharmacist is so often the professional person of first contact where inquiries about malaria are concerned. The group will be chaired by Mr John Bell (president of the Commonwealth Pharmaceutical Association), Mr Murtadah Sesay (past president, CPA, presently with the World Health Organisation and working with malaria problems), and myself. Our first formal meeting will be at the FIP congress in Vienna at the end of August.
Peter V. Rollason
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe