Why would more than 2,000 epidemiologic, clinical, laboratory, veterinary, and other public health professionals from more than 70 nations gather in a very hot July in Atlanta, Georgia to discuss problems that vex the world? The International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases (ICEID) 2000 was the occasion, and they attended the conference because they are committed to working and learning together to make the world a safer and healthier place. The mission of preventing and responding to epidemics and epizootics represents a worthy challenge and tends to draw an eclectic partnership, which is well and good, for that is exactly what is necessary to accomplish this goal. More than 50 public and private, international and federal, academic and professional, charitable and corporate, and other organizations joined the partnership.

Atlanta was once again the site for the conference, which built upon its predecessor in 1998 (1). Plans are well under way for the third ICEID in March 2002 in Atlanta. Built around 12 plenary and 18 panel sessions, ICEID 2000 included more than 100 oral presentations, 300 poster presentations, four meet-the-professor/expert sessions, special sessions on bioterrorism and newsmedia coverage of health stories, an opening session that featured speakers James Hughes, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Senator Bill Frist, David Heymann, from the World Health Organization, Enriqueta Bond, from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and George Lundberg, editor-in-chief of Medscape, along with a closing session on West Nile virus encephalitis. Clearly, the amount of information provided was more than most participants could absorb. To assist them, as well as their colleagues around the world who could not attend, ICEID 2000 has been made available on the Internet. Audio and visual access is available for most of the plenary sessions, many of the panel sessions, and the opening and closing general sessions. Many PowerPoint slide presentations, graciously donated by the presenters, are also posted. (http://www.cdc.gov/iceid/)

Coincidentally, the same week that ICEID 2000 took place, the British Medical Journal published an article in its ongoing series on medical careers on communicable disease control, calling it "arguably the most successful specialty of all" (2). ICEID attendees and readers of Emerging Infectious Diseases can certainly relate to the list of pros and cons Dr. Sarah Woodhouse listed in the article:

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