Dear Academicians,

Practicing pediatricians often needs to quickly ascertain or confirm, for a drug under prescription, the dosage, contraindications, toxicity, adjustment in renal disease, or compatibility with lactation. Thus, there is a felt need for a handy and easily browsable reference. Rational drug therapy also remains another concern. IAP Drug Formulary in this regard fulfills an important area in pediatric practice and provides state of the art information on drugs. Participation of subspecialty chapters of IAP ensures quality of the content. Formulary now contains IAP recommendations for 555 pediatric illnesses contributed by respective sub specialty chapters, 609 Monographs of drugs used exclusively in pediatric therapeutics, 1099 brand names of drugs available in India; e-newsletter is sent to 4122 active email ID's present in database.

Unique features of this pediatric drug formulary are its quarterly web updates, free of cost. This is the only formulary in the world with such a facility. There are now about 3500 satisfied users of this Book and CD.

Under Presidential Action Plan in 2009, new edition of the book - IAP Drug Formulary 2009 - will come out with better quality print to make it more users friendly and as a service to all PDA users, an Online Desktop and PDA version of the IAP Drug Formulary will be made available. The Online version will allow anyone anywhere in the world to access the IAP Drug Formulary. There is a great potential that through this book, CD and its online version, IAP would be able to provide service to pediatric care at a global level, especially in developing countries. I take this opportunity to congratulate Dr Jeeson C Unni, Editor-in-Chief of the book for his devotion and IAP CMIC for support towards maintaining the International Standard of the IAP Drug Formulary.

I wish the new edition of the book, the Online version and all the fresh updates - a resounding success.

National IAP President 2009