L Low

It is indeed a great honour for me to be appointed as the Chief Editor of the Hong Kong Journal of Paediatrics by the Hong Kong College of Paediatricians and the Hong Kong Paediatric Society.

The paediatric community in Hong Kong should acknowledge the immense contributions of the chief editors, executive and associate editors before me, whose efforts have, over the past 21 years, made our Journal a great success.

The first issue of the Journal, which was the official publication of the Hong Kong Paediatric Society, was published in August 1986 under the leadership of Dr. Tsao Yen Chow, Dr. Sam Lau and Dr. Henry Au-Yeung. We have seen the Journal grow from strength to strength over the next ten years with more and more local original scientific works published in the Journal. The dawn of a new era occurred in April 1996 when the Hong Kong Journal of Paediatrics (New Series) was inaugurated with Professor Yeung Chap Yung as the Chief Editor. The Journal then became the official publication of the Hong Kong College of Paediatricians and the Hong Kong Paediatric Society. Professor Yeung, the associate editors and the editorial board members have succeeded in bringing the Journal to new heights. Under their helm, four issues of the Journal are published each year with thematic issues focusing on different paediatric subspecialties. The editorial team has succeeded in attracting submissions of quality scientific works from local and regional paediatricians to the Journal resulting in the Journal being listed on Embase in 2005. This is no mean feat and the credit must go to Professor Yeung and his editorial team. With an educational grant from Johnson and Johnson, Professor Yeung made the visionary move to establish the electronic version of our Journal in the same year and Journal website www.hkjpaed.org boasts 1.3 million hits over the past eighteen months. The electronic version of the Journal is free and available to readers worldwide.

With the help of my associate editors and the editorial board members, I hope to uphold the great traditions and dedication set by my predecessors. The continuing success of our Journal depends on the support of the paediatric community in Hong Kong. With the introduction of mandatory active continuing medical education/continuing professional development (CME/CPD) activity by the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine in January 2008, our Journal will become all the more important as a resource for updating Fellows of the College on recent advances in paediatric knowledge and practice as well as providing valuable active CME/CPD activity.

I am lucky to have the support of Professor Albert Li, Dr. Wong Sik Nin and members of the editorial board, and together, we will strive to make the Hong Kong Journal of Paediatrics a pride of our paediatric community. I hope that paediatric colleagues will continue to submit articles to the Journal enthusiastically as in previous years.