Dear Editor,

It was a great pleasure to receive the New Edition of the African Journal of Neurological Sciences which I hold so dear and I would like to thank you for the comments on my work as former Editor, in your Editorial.

Being the Historian of the Pan African Association of Neurological Sciences (PAANS) I would like to remind the readers of the Journal, mainly the new readers, about some important facts of its inception.

The Pan African Association of Neurological Sciences was founded in Nairobi, January 1972 on the occasion of a Symposium on Tumours of the C.N.S. in the African, sponsored by the writer. The first Congress of the PAANS was held in Cairo, Egypt and the President was Professor O. Sorour of Cairo, and the secretary was myself. Since the foundation of the PAANS, the publication of a Journal of the Association has been discussed at length, but it took a long time before its realisation.

It was again in Nairobi in 1981, on the occasion of the 5th Biennial Annual General Meeting and Conference of the PAANS that I had validly explored the possibility of such a Journal. (A.J.N.S., vol. 15, page 68, 1996).

It was in January 1982 that the first issue of the Journal, founded by myself eventually appeared, the official organ of the PAANS. For the first two years it was published quarterly, but later, due to lack of papers and subscribers, it became biannual. It has been published consecutively for eighteen years under my Editorship often ferociously criticised, but still loved by many of us, as the only link between neuroscientists of the great Continent of Africa.

Eventually the Journal needed a complete renewal, this happened during the Meeting of the PAANS, in Blantyre, Malawi in the year 2000. The new Editor was elected Prof. G. Dechambenoit, well known in the Editorial field for several published monographs to his credit, with a renewal of the Editorial and Advisory Board.

The new Edition with its up to date cover looks very good and I am proud of it. I would like to wish the Editor, the Editorial Board, the Advisory Board and the International Advisory Board a great deal of success for the future of our Journal, the Journal of the Pan African Association of Neurological Sciences.

Prof. R. Ruberti

(Nairobi – Kenya)