[Tropical medicine consultation]

Tropical medicine consultations are fully justified in settings with the latest modern technology, where specific complementary tests are available and there are professionals with experience in tropical questions. That is to say, in tertiary hospitals. If such consultations took place in secondary hospitals or in primary care, they could be considered inefficient or unjustifiable from the point of view of the volume of patients attended to. However, there is a care deficit with respect to preventive activities concerning travellers or immigrants who have recently arrived from countries with a low income and where there is a high prevalence of imported diseases that are less recognised in our normal health milieu. Thus, international health units, which combine preventive and curative activities in a framework of public health provision and in a functional situation between the hospital level and that of primary care, offer a more efficient and suitable profile for the characteristics of the Spanish population. Their implementation depends on policy makers, the offer of a realistic portfolio of services, the existence of quality control monitoring and the possibility of managing information through a computer network.