Dear Fellows

This is the first of a series of messages from me, as your new President.

To be the 50th President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and its first woman president, is a huge and slightly daunting honour. It is a challenging time to be President, but also an exciting one.

The Society is changing. The last two presidents, Professor Brian Greenwood and Professor David Molyneux, have done a fantastic job, and have steered RSTMH very effectively into a new way of operating. These changes include holding a biennial residential meeting (of which more later), and strengthening the management team with the appointment of a Chief Executive Officer, Gerri McHugh.

The new team in 49-51 Bedford Square now enable the Society to move forward in many areas where previously we did not have the manpower. For example, RSTMH has a new phone system, and if you ring up out of regular UK office hours, you can now be confident that the staff will pick up your message. The new website should be in place by the early autumn, and a new database will help us update contact details.

The Society is special. It covers tropical medicine, international health, health policy, clinical and epidemiological studies and laboratory science. Many of the Fellows are medically qualified, but both David Molyneux and I are PhD scientists rather than medics. For me a huge plus is the ability to make contacts and socialise with people while hearing excellent talks that are usually well outside my own area of research (which is the immunology of mycobacteria). Our recent meeting at the Linnean Society made me think about biodiversity in a way I should do more often – and some things have stuck in my mind, like the use of animals to develop medical treatments, and the extinction of a very unique frog that swallowed its eggs and then raised the small frogs in its mouth.

Hopefully some of you will be at the FESTMIH Congress in Verona from 06 to 10 September, where we will officially launch our new journal, International Health.

The dates for our next biennial meeting in Liverpool are also fixed, so please put 08-10 September, 2010 into your diary; further details about the scientific programme will follow in the autumn.

I hope that I will be able to meet with as many of you as possible during the next two years, in London, at our meetings, or at other international meetings. In particular I am eager to hear more from Fellows, wherever they are based, about what you value most about the Society and what extra benefits the RSTMH might bring you.

In the meantime, best wishes,

Hazel Dockrell