About ICHG
History of ICHG
The Tropical Paediatric Group was formed in the early 1970s. It was one of the first British Paediatric Association specialist groups, with British paediatricians who had worked in the developing world forming the nucleus of its membership. Much of the early work in tropical child health had originated in Britain and they wanted that to be a continuing concern of the BPA. Cicely Williams had started maternal and child health clinics in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in the 1930s. Derek Jelliffe was appointed to the first UNICEF chair of paediatrics and child health at Makerere College, Uganda, where he founded the first journal of tropical paediatrics. Links began to develop between paediatric units in Britain and the developing world, one of the first of which (1954) was between Great Ormond Street and Uganda.
In 1964 the BPA Council appointed the Overseas Committee to review arrangements for postgraduate education of overseas students in Britain, the training of British graduates in tropical paediatrics, the seconding of senior registrars overseas and the arrangement of the programmes of Heinz fellows and their supervisors. Heinz fellowships were inaugurated in 1961 to assist British paediatricians to make short visits to developing countries and overseas paediatricians to attend the annual BPA meeting and visit academic paediatric centres.
One of the first tasks of the Overseas Committee was a questionnaire survey of those British medical schools and institutions which provided education in paediatrics for overseas postgraduates. This information was published in the booklet 'Paediatric training in the United Kingdom' (1968) with later editions, and finally, in response to changes in registration and GMC rules, a fourth edition in 1986. The Overseas Committee maintained contact with government through the ODA until the mid 1980s, leading to the establishment of International Child Health units, which organised courses for doctors at the Institute for Child Health in London, the Department of Tropical Paediatrics in Liverpool, and the Departments of Paediatrics in Newcastle, Edinburgh and Exeter.
Partly as a result of these activities during the 1960s and visits from paediatricians from overseas, the number of British paediatricians working in developing countries increased considerably. For this reason, when BPA specialist groups were established it was appropriate to include a group to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of the practice and problems of child health in the tropics. In 1986 the Tropical Paediatric Group changed its name to the International Child Health Group with a formal constitution and membership fee.
