Of the top ten commonest diseases in Tanzania, eight are due to infections. The diseases are malaria, upper respiratory tract infections, diarrhoeal diseases, eye diseases, pneumonia, skin diseases, intestinal worms, anaemia, accidents and gonorrhoea. Thus the bulk of morbidity is due to these infections.

For any treatment guidelines to be of use, it must reflect this reality. An attempt has been made to highlight the major diseases in each section showing causative organisms, highlighting briefly clinical features and giving detailed treatment guidelines based on the national essential drug list of 199. Both adult and paediatric dosage forms are included as well as examples of clinically relevant side effects and contraindications.

For the size of this booklet, it has not been possible to be exhaustive. There are many disease conditions that have been omitted not because they are unimportant, rather for the sake of brevity. Similarly details of drug side effects and contraindications have not been covered.

Also, the authors feel that details of accidents and surgical conditions deserve a separate manual. Therefore the reader is referred to standard textbooks of medicine and therapeutics.

Comments and ideas from readers of this book are highly welcome and should be directed to the Chief Pharmacist, Pharmaceutical and Supplies Unit, Ministry of Health so that they can be incorporated in the next edition.