Scaling up the global health conversation.

摘要

Last week, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced the launch of a new medical journal, in conjunction with the Public Library of Science. The journal, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, will be open-access, covering science, policy, and advocacy. In their announcement, the Gates Foundation argued that: "while other medical journals have increased their attention to neglected diseases in recent years, few journals focus on the topic. The new journal will provide an important forum for scientists from developed and developing countries to share the latest information, on neglected disease research."We welcome this initiative. Any investment in scaling up communication about global health is to be warmly applauded. In particular, any programme that works with scientists in low and middle income settings to widen the circumference of their influence will make an important contribution to achieving health equity. Scientists and policymakers in these challenging settings urgently need strengthened capacity to publish their research-and journals-for local audiences. Several initiatives, such as the African Medical Journal Editors Partnership Program,have established collaborations between high-income country journals and publications in Africa to do just that. (The Lancet, for example, has been partnering with the Ghana Medical journal for several years.)