4th New Zealand Travel and Geographical Medicine Conference

The 4th New Zealand Travel and Geographical Medicine Conference was held in Auckland, New Zealand from 19th to the 21st of November, 2004. This meeting continued the high academic and professional standards of the previous biennial meetings, in that the speakers who presented were highly regarded locally in their respective fields of travel, geographical, military medicine, and public health.

Over the course of three days the meeting presented a programme that investigated the upsurge in global disease surveillance, safety and security issues for travellers, standards of safety in yellow fever vaccination centres, emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, and military and adventure medicine. Invited speakers to the meeting, organised by Associate Professor Shaw of the Worldwise Travellers Health Centres of New Zealand, were Dr Graham Fry (Dublin, Ireland), Professor Peter Leggat (Townsville, Australia), and Dr Bruce Adlam (Singapore). There were 20 presenters from New Zealand and they spoke to an audience of around 50 participants.

The meeting was deemed a popular success, and although funding and support from pharmaceutical companies has all but dried up, there is considerable goodwill amongst the local travel health community to continue these meetings, the only such national travel health meetings in Australasia and the South Pacific Region.

Marc Shaw, FRNZCGP, FFTM, FACTM, DipTravMed