Two important new features can now be seen on the home page of TropIKA.net. One is a new Featured Meeting – the 2008 Global Ministerial Forum on Research for Health which is now taking place in Bamako, Mali. A TropIKA.net editorial team (six journalists and ten rapporteurs) is present at this major conference and we are providing daily summaries of the sessions, interviews and a blog covering all areas of the meeting. All of our in-depth coverage may be accessed here.

We have also introduced a new section called ‘Toolkits’. Under the Health Research Systems Analysis (HRSA) Initiative, the World Health Organization (WHO) consulted with a range of partners to develop concepts and tools to describe, analyse, and benchmark national health research systems. The collection of tools provides information and resources for systematically collecting health research and national health research systems data. Details will be found here.

A few months ago, I spoke with a leading researcher who is also a user of TropIKA.net and he wondered whether one of our most useful functions might turn out to be alerting the infectious disease community to the publication of new reports. His point was that new journal articles can be located on PubMed and other databases but reports may easily go unnoticed. This is indeed case now that an increasing number of organizations are involved in our field. Within the last few days, we have highlighted four new reports:
- The Global Burden of Disease. The latest update of WHO’s comprehensive assessment of the health of the world’s population.
- The International Response to Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza: Science, Policy and Politics. A report from the Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS) Centre.
- Global Climate Change and Extreme Weather Events: Understanding the Contributions to Infectious Disease Emergence. This document arises from discussions at a workshop held by the Forum on Microbial Threats.
- Ending the R&D Crisis in Public Health: Promoting pro-poor medical innovation. A new analysis by Oxfam.

The content of the other sections of TropIKA.net continues of course to expand. Please visit our News section, where there is good news to be found on declines in malaria prevalence in several African countries, and our Research section where genetics and mathematical modelling are among the recent topics.