General practice residency training program in Thailand: past, present, and future.

The General Practice was approved by the Thai Medical Council as a specialty in 1969. The residency training programs were revised in 1992. The first three - year rotating postgraduate residency training program was started in 1973 with a total of 9 programs by the late 1980s. Seven were in Bangkok, and the other 2 were in the North. The programs contained curricula objectives, clinical rotation in various disciplines including a general practice block in provincial or community hospitals. The weakness of the programs was the lack of a general practice department, a general practice trainer or preceptor and a general practice course organizer. Finally, the General Practitioners Association played a little role in the postgraduate general practice residency. After the revision, the general practice residency was changed to family medicine residency training in 1999. The College of Family Physicians of Thailand was established to take a central role in postgraduate education.

Histamine content in 24-hour urine in patients with dengue haemorrhagic fever.

Twenty-four hour urinary histamine in 12 patients with DHF compared to 12 normal subjects in the comparable age and sex were studied. The results revealed significantly increased urinary excretion in patients with DHF than in normal subjects in both free and total forms. This finding suggests that histamine may be one, if not all, of the mediators released during the course of the disease, especially in the severe cases. Histamine may play an important role for the leakage of intravascular fluid to the various serous spaces resulting in hypovolemia and shock.

Surveillance of enterovirus infections in Bangkok. I. Isolation of enterovirus from faecal specimens of healthy children.

During the period August 1970 through July 1973, about 50 faecal specimens collected each month from healthy pre-school children of lower economic status in Bangkok were studied for virus isolation using primary monkey kidney cells and new born mice. From a total of 1,823 samples, 557 (30.5%) were positive: 86 (4.8%) polioviruses, 77 (4.2%) coxsackieviruses B, 223 (12.2%) echoviruses, and 127 strains (7.0%) of unidentified viruses. Altogether, 45 serotypes of enteric viruses were identified. More than 30 serotypes, including the 3 types of poliovirus, were present each year. Infection rates were higher in males than in females and highest at one year of age, the rates decreasing with progressing age. There was no marked seasonal variation of enterovirus infections in Bangkok. The poliovirus infection index was low from September to January, and the index of polio and non-polio enterovirus infections was highest in April.