Corrigenda to: The first fifty years of the Papua New Guinea Medical Journal: a celebration of its Golden Jubilee

This article corrects Papua New Guinea Medical Journal 2005; 48(1–2): 2–26.

Dr Roy Scragg sent documents about the early issues of the Journal that were very informative. They were considered by the Editors and Editorial Committee, but no outcome or conclusion of these considerations was published. Dr Scragg’s documents state explicitly that it was John Gunther who had the idea to establish the Journal and that it was his drive and inspiration that created it. He is without question the Founding Editor. Dr Kenneth W. Todd was appointed from the Department of Public Health to be responsible for the Journal. Dr Scragg edited an early issue on kuru (Vol 3 No 1).

Dr Gunther wrote an explanatory statement to introduce the first issue of the Journal and is the author of its editorial. His hand is evident throughout and also in the contents of the second issue. However, no front-page written name of the editor of any issue of the Journal is provided until Eric J. Wright is named as editor of Vol 4 No. 2. This gap in documentation was filled in by guesswork in the published paper and is wrong. All issues from this one onwards have a named editor and the rest of the Table 3 is correct.

In summary the conclusions are best expressed by revisions to Table 3 in the original published paper.

Between Gunther and Wright in the ‘Editor’ column add the following rows:

The rest of the table, from Dr Ian Maddocks onwards, is unchanged.

Text on page 2, column 1, lines 6–11 should also be edited as follows (bold text insertion):

It was initially an instrument of the Department of Public Health and, after the first 2 issues, the editorial responsibility for it devolved on Kenneth W. Todd and Roy Scragg, members of the Department, and Eric J. Wright, who was Assistant Director (Medical Training) in the Department.