Half-time for the Millennium Development Goals: Time for travel medicine to enter the field

The MDG Indicators website is a useful resource for this purpose.7 Those HCW working in travel medicine have already had experience in advocacy for the host countries in tourism, mainly developing countries, for example, through the work of the Host Country Committee (HCC) of the International Society of Travel Medicine (ISTM), which has as its focus: the responsibility to study the impact of travel into such regions, to conduct research and develop strategies to protect local destination communities from the negative impact of tourism and explore the interaction between tourism growth and travel health.8 Those HCW working in travel medicine, including some of those working with the HCC of the ISTM, have also advocated for improved working conditions for some marginalised groups of workers in the tourism industry, such as the mountain porters, which has given rise to organisations such as the International Porter Protection Group.9 Progress towards achieving the UN MDG must accelerate during the next seven and a half years in order to capture the potential benefits available from achieving the MDG.