Annual College of Medicine Research Dissemination Conference, Blantyre, November 12(th), 2005.

The theme for the 9th annual conference of the College of Medicine was “Research addressing poverty-related disease in Malawi”. The conference was opened by the Principal of the College of Medicine, Professor Robin Broadhead. He welcomed participants and explained why this annual meeting, fixed each year to coincide with the completion of the academic year, is such an important day in the calendar of the College. He introduced the invited guest speaker, Dr Davison Gwatkin, an international expert on issues of equity in health systems and currently a consultant for DFID in Lilongwe. There were 68 abstracts submitted for presentation and following peer review, 40 accepted for oral presentation and 27 for poster presentation (see abstracts below). Abstracts were peer-reviewed and I thank COM staff for their assistance. Presentations were of a high standard and covered a wide range of topics relevant to the health issues of Malawi. There were presentations covering maternal health, child health, HIV/AIDS, malaria, bacterial disease, cancer and the first session of the day was devoted to “reaching” the poor. This was the first year that parallel sessions were introduced due to the high number of abstracts submitted. One session of the day included five oral presentations from year 4 medical students and many were impressed by the high quality of their work and of their presentation. The quality of the posters was also to a high standard and reflected a similar range of topics and research activity as the oral presentations. There were almost 200 participants who registered for this year's conference. Efforts to raise funds for the event were not particularly successful. The only major external sponsor was the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme and we are very grateful for their support. Particular thanks to Ms Mary Bwanali and Elizabeth Kadangwe of COM postgraduate office for the work they did in preparing for the conference throughout the year. The COM Annual Research Dissemination Meeting is the major health research dissemination meeting in the Malawian calendar. It is encouraging to see that the quality of and interest in this important vehicle of dissemination of health research in Malawi continues to improve and grow. We look forward to next year's event which will be the 10th dissemination meeting.