It is a great honor to welcome you to the 60th Annual Meeting for the Japanese Society of Tropical Medicine, a memorial conference held in a beautiful island Okinawa.

The Society is a member of the Japanese Association of Medical Science and has a long history of research activities on controlling infectious diseases in the tropics and/or subtropical areas, and emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. And also, under the name of global health, research topics studied in the society has been extended to malnutrition, maternal and child health, climate change, lifestyle-related diseases among residents in tropical regions and/or low-income countries. Now, the academic area of tropical medicine encompasses basic researches, clinical and epidemiological researches, environmental and ecological researches, and cultural anthropology, and consequently, interacts directly with cultural and economic aspects of society.

The theme of the 60th memorial conference is "One step ahead in tropical medicine: field, bench, in-silico", under which, programs introducing 1) clinical research in tropical regions and multi-point epidemiological studies (fields), 2) basic researches on vaccine development and on understanding the pathogenesis of causative agents of indigenous tropical infectious diseases (bench), 3) studies based on high-performance computers, artificial intelligence, network devices, etc, in the tropics (in-silico), will be prepared.

Okinawa is only one prefecture which enjoys the tropical/subtropical climate in Japan, and shared borders with several East and Southeast Asian countries. In the year 2018, 10 million tourists visited Okinawa and a quarter of which came from overseas, and monitoring on and countermeasures for imported infectious diseases are urgent. In addition, the distribution of infectious diseases and outbreak patterns of them are reported different from those of mainland Japan. On the other hand, lifestyle-related diseases represented by obesity and/or diabetes has been popular on Okinawa. Thus, concerns of tropical medicine and global health are commonly observed in Okinawan society, thus, organizing the memorial conference on Okinawa is of great significance. I am delighted if this conference may serve to provide opportunities to produce new collaborations.

I hope participants enjoy all the programs of the memorial 60th meeting held on beautiful tropical islands of Okinawa which is rich in a unique culture and cuisine.