Empowerment of Medical Toxicology in Bangladesh: Inspiration from the APAMT

In the last issue of Asia Pacific Journal of Medical Toxicology (APJMT), editor-in-chief, Dr. Reza Afshari focused on an important contemporary issue of empowering toxicology in the Asia pacific region (1). The topic drew our attention and we would like to share the situation of Bangladesh in light of this editorial. Dr. Afshari correctly emphasized on forming national societies of medical toxicology in each country of Asia Pacific region (1). Bangladesh formed its own national society, ‘Toxicology Society of Bangladesh (TSB)’ in the year 2008 under the leadership of Prof. M. Abul Faiz (2). The society has its own website (http://www.tsbbd.org/index.php). Although in small scale, the society is trying its best to disseminate knowledge of medical toxicology throughout the country. So far, we have arranged two successful national conferences in the year 2011 at Rangpur medical college (northwest of Bangladesh) and in 2013 at Chittagong medical college (southeast of Bangladesh). The society decided to arrange a national gathering at every two years interval, and hence, the next conference is scheduled to be held at Sylhet MAG Osmani medical college (northeast of Bangladesh) in coming 2015. TSB purposefully has arranged the national meetings outside capital (Dhaka), so that medical toxicology as a subject can be ventilated to the remote corners of Bangladesh. Around four hundreds domestic and international participants attended both the conferences and some of the foreign participants were policy makers of the Asia Pacific Association of Medical Toxicology (APAMT). Bangladeshi physicians started to participate APAMT congresses since 2006 (Colombo meeting) and so far TSB sent members to each meeting of the APAMT. Dr. Afshari mentioned about travel grant as a strong step to motivate young investigators of this region (1). We also support his statement. So far, a number of participants from Bangladesh have received travel grants, and this surely encouraged them for future work. In fact, they are now the core members of the TSB.  Undoubtedly, the APAMT is the encouragement behind all of our activities. Introduction of APJMT is clearly a milestone event for us. The young researcher of this region especially those who cannot publish their paper for various technical and linguistic reasons got a hope to see the evolution of APJMT. At least, now they can try their paper for possible publication even though their work needs fine tunes. As a Scientific and publication secretary of the TSB, I specially highlighted the journal to all of the members of TSB and others throughout the country and the journal is now receiving regular papers from Bangladesh. We firmly believe that in the near future, the APJMT will become the representative of the research in medical toxicology in this region.