HIV is changing the face of tropical medicine

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7552.1280

BMJ 2006;332:1280 (27 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7552.1280

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HIV is changing the face of tropical medicine

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

As part of my training as a specialist registrar in infectiousdiseases and tropical medicine, I have spent the past year inMalawi learning "real" tropical medicine. Of the many thingsI have learnt in this year, the most striking has been thattropical medicine is not quite what I thought it would be. Ihad expected to become familiar with the classic tropical diseases:malaria, schistosomiasis, and trypanosomiasis, to name a few.

But, in reality, I have seen little of these diseases. The reasonis obvious: one disease has surpassed all others in terms ofmorbidity and mortality, pushing aside the other, more typical,tropical diseases. That disease is, of course, HIV. About 75%of the adult general medical inpatients are HIV positive atthe hospital where I have been working. The huge economic andsocial impact of HIV on populations in Africa has been welldescribed. Less . . . [Full text of this article]

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Elinor Moore, lecturer in medicine

the College of Medicine, Blantyre, Malawi elinor007@hotmail.com