Travel Medicine in Southern Africa

Following the successful Africa European Conference on Travel Medicine in Cape Town in February 2004, interest in travel medicine has continued to grow in southern Africa.

The University of Pretoria has incorporated travel medicine into its undergraduate medical curriculum, while the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) will host a course leading to a certificate in travel medicine. This course involves two weekends of attendance and studying at home. The Johannesburg course attracts both physicians and nurses.

Additionally, the distance learning course offered by the Academic Centre for Travel Medicine and Vaccines at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School in London, United Kingdom, has attracted students from southern Africa. This course ultimately leads to either a diploma or an MSc, and enrolls both doctors, nurses, and other health professionals.

As a mark of the interest shown by South African primary care and family physicians, the South African Medical Journal (SAMJ) has dedicated an entire special edition of its CME to travel medicine. The SAMJ has agreed to make these articles available free of charge to ISTM members. Articles cover malaria and rabies in primary care, travel related DVT, travellers’ diarrhoea, the pregnant traveller, travel related dermatoses, fever in the returned traveller, and the immunocompromised traveller. Members wishing to receive copies may e-mail Steve Toovey, guest editor of the journal, directly at toovey@travelclinic.co.za. A further mark of the growing interest by southern African primary care practitioners in travel medicine is the publishing of an extensive series on the subject by South African Family Practice, a peer reviewed journal. Pharmacists are also interested. Journals of community pharmacy are publishing articles on the subject.

In less than ten years travel medicine has grown from a service offered by just two clinics, to a discipline practiced by nurses, pharmacists, and doctors. There are now more than 130 yellow fever vaccination centres in the country.

Steve Toovey, Regional Editor