Editor's note
In 2008, MFP published 59 articles in three issues. We had planned to publish these issues in March, June and September. Unfortunately there was some delay for each issue. This third issue is only ready for uploading in Jan 2009 and will be printed in February 2009. The number of article we publish per year has shown a small increase over the past three years, up from 47 articles in 2006 and 49 articles in 2007.
It has been three years since the inaugural issue of Malaysian Family Physician in 2006. Our original target of applying for PubMed indexing in three years is unlikely to be met. We need to increase contents containing original works and to reach out to the regional audience.
In late November 2008, we were sad to hear of the passing of Dr MK Rajakumar who served as one of the Advisors of this journal since its inception. Dr Rajakumar was an exemplary physician with broad interest in many healthcare issues and problems in the society. Since his passing, the flurry of writings about him gave us a much better understanding of the scale of his contribution beyond family medicine and healthcare. In spite of his heavy commitment within and outside our profession, he found time to support our journal. In my collection of his 30 journal articles, 13 of them were published in Malaysian Family Physician or its predecessors (Family Practitioner and Family Physician).
A collection of his essays, Family Medicine, Healthcare & Society, was published by the Academy of Family Physicians of Malaysian in April last year. The Academy wishes to thank the copyright owners of his articles for allowing us to host the full text of this book in our journal website. [url of book website]
The Malaysian Family Physician wishes to dedicate this issue to the memory of Dr MK Rajakumar. His picture that grace our cover came from the Souvenir Book published in conjunction with his public memorial held recently. We wish to thank Mr Tan Khai Hee of Hai-O Enterprise Bhd and the family of Dr MK Rajakumar for allowing us to reuse the photograph.CL Teng
tengcl@gmail.com