Thousands of scientists and policy makers get together every year for the annual meeting of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. The meeting focuses on human health in the tropical regions of the world. Malaria is the celebrity here, and the largest number of sessions in the largest rooms present the latest research and successes for this still killer disease. The Gaylord National Resort and Conference Center is humungous, and somewhat like Disneyland. There are expensive restaurants and big Christmas trees. It isn’t in the city, but removed to a difficult to access part of Maryland; no subways or buses.  Only Ubers. I study bird malaria, so there is not much going on here in my specific field. I attend this meeting to learn about the latest developments that confirm my claim that we can learn a lot about human malaria by studying the disease in birds. There is a lot we can learn about the transmission of diseases by studying them in natural systems. It is hard to study how deforestation and global climate change affect the disease dynamics of malaria in humans, because many of them have drugs and bed nets and doctors. I noticed that there was very little about the disease ecology of malaria, or the other diseases at this meeting. Tropical medicine is now moving more and more into genomics and big data. There has been huge progress in understanding the pathogens, and many areas of the world have been successful in lessening the burden of disease, but still the underlying ecology is somehow lacking.

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I love seeing scientists from all over the planet, and in this meeting, the African scientists are well represented. What bothers me is that this conference costs millions of dollars. The rooms at the conference hotel are about $300/night. I believe in the importance of networking, but it is simply too expensive. Most of this could be done over the internet, and the meeting could be held someplace much cheaper. Why Washington DC, and not someplace in Africa or South America?  I know it is the ASTMH, so the United States are the hosts, but we all live globally these days.  At least it could be a couple days shorter and in a cheaper US city. I stayed in Alexandria, across the bridge, to save some dollars. I visited the National Geographic Society headquarters, and also had a brief visit at the National Portrait Gallery. I gave my presentation on the last day of the conference; Sunday morning at 8:15 am, so not a huge audience, but still I generated some interest in our work. The National Museum of African American History and Culture was new to me, and I got to visit with my cousin, who happens to be African American. We didn’t have a lot of time to read everything, but the museum is beautifully done. The bottom floor exhibits the history of the slave trade and their tragic experiences. The exhibits are well done, but for me, I would have liked to see information about the African traditions that most assuredly persisted for a while, but were quickly lost. It must have been difficult for the curators to impress the museum-goers of the horrific conditions, but still make it tolerable. The museum is important and timely, and I also learned to enjoy the music of Chuck Brown and the Go-Go tradition in Washington DC. A visit to Washington always widens my perspectives.