After 25 years of distinguished service as Secretary-General of the Council for International Organisations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS), Dr Zbigniew Bankowski has retired. Formerly a WHO staff member, Dr Bankowski served initially as the Responsible Officer for Research Coordination and the Programme for Research Training and Grants. He subsequently served as WHO representative to Tunisia, a post which he combined with a Visiting Professorship of Histology in the Faculty of Medicine of Tunis.

In December 1999, CIOMS, which was created jointly by UNESCO and WHO in 1949, organised an International Conference on Pharmacovigilance and Related Ethical Issues, held in WHO and designed to mark its 50th anniversary.

Dr Bankowski has been elected Secretary-General Emeritus of CIOMS, and to highlight his many eminent contributions to the work of CIOMS, in such areas as drug safety and bioethics/health care ethics, his many colleagues, friends and admirers have established a Zbigniew Bankowski Lecture Fund, intended to cover the costs of an annual lecture.

The fund will support a Zbigniew Bankowski Lecture on ethical aspects of health policy, to be given approximately once a year at a CIOMS conference by an eminent participant in that event. The distinction of being selected as Bankowski Lecturer will carry with it a special honorarium, and the lecture will be published in the conference proceedings as the Zbigniew Bankowski Lecture. The selection of the Lecturer will be made by the planning committee for each particular conference.