• Montserrat
• volcanic

I have only recently had an opportunity to see the OEM online abstract of this paper,¹ but I did see the unpublished original version in the Health Department archives while I was Chief Medical Officer on Montserrat from late 1998 to late 2000.

My first comment is that this survey of schoolchildren was carried out in February 1998, and yet it has only now been published in a scientific journal more than five years later. This is of some relevance since the highlights of the paper published in the BMJ on 12 April 2003² comment that since the time of the first eruption in 1995 the children “have had an excess of respiratory illness” and that “few were receiving recommended appropriate treatment”. This statement is misleading. It may well have been true up until 1998 but it is certainly not true for the period beyond that time. The reality of …