London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, Diploma, Tropical Medicine and Hygiene

The course combines practical laboratory work, a series of lectures and seminars and some clinical experience designed to provide doctors with the clinical and factual knowledge that forms the basis of professional competence in tropical medicine; it is designed for physicians who intend to work in the tropics, physicians with tropical experience who have returned for a refresher, or practitioners who may be working in non-tropical countries and who need experience in clinical parasitology, imported diseases and travel medicine; much of the course is devoted to seminars, in which a multi-disciplinary team of experts from within and outside the School covers a particular disease or group of diseases in depth; lectures cover the causative organisms, epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical features, diagnosis, management and prevention of these diseases; time is set aside after each lecture for discussion; implications for travel medicine are discussed where appropriate; other seminars focus on aspects of community health. These include an introduction to epidemiological methods used in the study of communicable diseases, and lectures on water supply, sanitation and nutrition; seminars are also held on maternal and child health, non-communicable disease, population and reproductive health and health in emergencies.