Sources of information in tropical medicine

The literature of tropical medicine, like all clinical specialties, tends to be distributed throughout the medical literature, and reliance on the specialist tropical medicine literature alone will not usually be sufficient to cover adequately the total literature. It is important therefore that any search of the literature will need to encompass both the general and specialist sources. This brief guide to the information sources of tropical medicine will limit itself to the main focus of this book, i.e. clinical, diagnostic and control aspects of tropical medicine. Any systematic search of the literature must use a variety of different sources including journals, books, databases and various websites. Many traditional print resources such as journals, indexes and increasingly also books are now available online and those listed below include only a selection of the most important sources. However, an important part of this survey is on identifying the most important Internet-based resources, as a reflection that the Internet has become, de facto, the main vehicle for up-to-date information in medicine, even in the poorest regions of the world. Inevitably some web sites become unavailable, change URL or are not updated. Yet there are two regularly updated gateway sites which cover much of the source material listed: the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp's Library Links to Selected Web Sites and the AED Satellife's Essential Health Links