Director's Welcome Message
It gives me great pleasure to invite former staff, past and current collaborators and friends of the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research (IMR) to attend the Institute's 40th Anniversary Colloquium, to be held in Goroka, Papua New Guinea from 30 June – 4 July, 2008.
The Institute has come a long way from its humble beginnings in 1968 in Eastern Highlands Province to being recognised today as a prestigious biomedical and social sciences research institution in Papua New Guinea, and globally recognised for its excellent work. The IMR is a statutory institution of the Papua New Guinea Government, and is tasked with conducting research into the health problems with the ultimate goal of providing effective interventions which will lead to improvements in health and in the control and prevention of diseases. The Institute has been organized principally around its disease-based research programs, which are aligned to the disease priorities of the National Health Department; pneumonia, malaria, enteric diseases, sexually transmitted diseases including HIV/AIDS, women’s health, filariasis, TB, and dengue .
There have been many successful research programs conducted at IMR over the last forty years that have led to; intervention for control of diseases in the country, and the contribution of scientific information to the global knowledge. Success stories from IMR include pigbel vaccine, prevention and eradication of kuru, mapping of the epidemiology of malaria in PNG, contributing to the national policy on treatment of malaria, usage of treated bed nets to prevent malaria, treatment and control of filariasis, introduction of Hib vaccine in PNG, mapping of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, providing information for intervention and policy on controlling HIV/AIDS, on treatment and control of filariasis, monitoring of antimicrobial resistance patterns to generic drugs in treating pneumonia, gonorrhoea and other bacterial diseases, evaluation of the typhoid diagnosis, evaluation of the measles vaccine and contribution to global eradication of poliomyelitis.
I trust that every attendee at this Colloquium will take the time to reflect that, whilst we have all come a great way in those forty years, we still have a great deal of work to do. The future of the IMR looks very bright and this is very imminent from the threefold increase in the number of research programs being currently conducted with more expected soon. With an excellent in-house financial and administration support, and good support from the National government and the international collaborating partners, I see the IMR embarking on many new and interesting scientific researches in the near future.
Welcome back to PNG and share with us your experiences and valuable contributions that have made the IMR a household name in biomedical & social science research in PNG, and globally in the last forty years.
See you at the Colloquium.
Come and enjoy…………………….
Yours sincerely,
Professor Peter Siba, PhD
Director