Point-of-care testing is an emerging field within community medicine and will be discussed at this week's South Pacific Congress in Auckland.

Privately-held vaccine developer Vaxine and Flinders University have been awarded a grant of US$2.5 million over three years by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop vaccines that protect against bioterrorist attacks.

Shakespeare's witches, in 'Macbeth', were concocting mischief, not some nostrum to ward off plague, but some of the things that imbue today's vaccines with immunogenic fizz would not have been misplaced among the eldritch ingredients in their cauldron.