NORTHWARD HO!: Experience in Papua New Guinea and the development of academic public health and general practice in Australia.

Ten of the initial post-1975 appointees to chairs of public health and/or general practice in Australian and New Zealand universities had significant experience in Papua New Guinea. They had held often combined positions that covered academic, clinical, public health, and research arenas, most being retained when they returned to Australia and New Zealand. Their experiences in the former Territory of Papua and New Guinea, now known as Papua New Guinea, are reviewed here, and how each translated that experience in the development of departments in Australian medical schools after 1975 is identified.

The surgical management of lesions of ulcerans infections due to Mycobacterium ulcerans, revisited.

The recommended approach to the management of ulcerans disease lesions is a combined surgical/multidrug medical approach. Small lesions may resolve spontaneously, and for other early lesions cure may be effected either by medication or simple excision alone. A much simpler, less-aggressive surgical approach, combined with antibiotics to manage the larger lesions of ulcerans disease, is described.

What's in a name? Ulcerans disease: infections due to Mycobacterium ulcerans.

Lesions due to Mycobacterium ulcerans infection may have more synonyms and eponyms than any other disease. New diseases are named for the person who discovered them, from the place from which they were first described or some major clinical feature. 'Buruli ulcer', the name by which the disease is most frequently known, is none of these.