Venues – Hotel Paradise Suites, Kololi & Tendaba Camp and Conference Facility, The Gambia

A three day symposium/retreat in Senegal's sister nation of The Gambia - taking in a number of the regional scientific highlights, as well as some of the region's countryside en route. 

The first port of call will be Kololi on the Atlantic coast, in close proximity to the main site of the Medical Research Council (MRC), The Gambia in Fajara.  The meeting programme includes a visit to the laboratories of the MRC's Malaria Programme.** 

Secondly, the Malaria 2007 roadshow moves on to take advantage of the tranquility and natural beauty of the rural riverside location of Tendaba in the centre of the country, which provides the perfect setting and atmosphere for flexible and relaxed discussions.  Plenty of time will also be available for participants to take in some of the fantastic scenery, flora and fauna of the area, on foot or by boat. 

Finally, before returning to Dakar, comes a site visit to the MRC's field station in Farafenni **, north of the Gambia river on the border with Senegal.  Farafenni is central to the work of the MRC Malaria Programme, as well as for a number of international collaborators, having long since been employed as the site for field studies into new therapeutic approaches and vaccine trials. 

**  It must be stressed that MRC is in no way responsible for the organization of the meeting, and that our visits to their sites depends solely on their generosity and willingness to set aside time to receive meeting participants, for which we are most grateful. 

We start not with a list of invited speakers, but with a blank, flexible programme, containing a number of as yet unclaimed oral presentation slots that will be filled in the coming months by dedicated researchers in the field of malaria research who sign up to participate and who also demonstrate an interest in presenting work during the meeting.

This approach might seem to be a little unorthodox - and perhaps it is - but it works!

It works extremely effectively in creating an excellent atmosphere for constructive scientific discussion and debate, and it serves to provide the perfect breeding ground for the initiation of a wide range of new relationships and collaborative efforts.

If Mangosteen's approach has one failing, it is only that more interested researchers don't trust and believe that such a differently organized meeting can be as effective, and of equal or greater value, as a traditional conference.  This only serves to reduce the willingness of some excellent individual scientists to commit their time towards participating and making valuable contributions.  This is a failure not of the approach itself, but in the communication of the approach - it's something that we as a new initiative are currently working hard to rectify - but yet it's a problem that quickly disappears once word of mouth spreads and more prospective participants begin to find and hold the belief that Mangosteen's approach can work for them too.  If you intend to participate, please do spread the word amongst your colleagues in the field, your assistance here is invaluable.

If you are interested in participating in Malaria 2007, but have your doubts about the manner of organization and ultimate strength of the programme, please don't believe the words of the organizer or waste any time reading further on - instead, please simply take a look at the list of past participant testimonials from recent meetings or contact one or more of the past participants from conferences in related scientific fields in order to ask for their opinions on the meeting that they attended - as well as on Mangosteen's overall approach to communicating research between colleagues in both the developed and developing worlds and on their experience in West Africa in general.