The Chairperson writes...

The past few months have again seen exciting times in the life of your global umbrella organisation!

Our membership continues to grow as you will see elsewhere in this e-news.

We were thrilled to be able to participate in a landmark conference in Lat America held under the auspices of LASID – the Latin American Society for Immune Deficiency and we are extremely grateful to Board member Roberta Pena from Argentina and Dr Teresa Espanol, Chair of our Medical Advisory Panel, for all their hard and to Dr Jose Franco for his inspired leadership of the event.

In November IPOPI hosted the first ever meeting of Global Leaders in primary immunodeficiency in London. What a privilege to be able to spend time with experts from around the world who were prepared to give up a weekend, travel to London and share their thinking and experience with us – and with each other. Again, there is a report of the meeting elsewhere in this edition of e-news.

Looking ahead, we are hosting a one day meeting for Eastern European countries in Berlin immediately following the IPPC meeting in March. We want to encourage the development of new national member organisations in that region by inviting one clinical immunologist and one patient (who both speak good English!) to come and learn more about IPOPI; the power patients have when they come together as a group and the benefits of working together with their medical staff to improve diagnosis and secure better treatments.

Then in October we hope to be able to meet many of you, our friends, when we all assemble in Istanbul for the biennial meeting of ESID, IPOPI and INGID. We have an exciting programme and look forward to welcoming you there.

For all those things we are all deeply grateful to the IPOPI staff – Carol who provides administrative back-up and David who works so very hard on behalf of the global community of people with primary immunodeficiencies.

In closing, my husband Greg, the Board and staff of IPOPI join me in sending seasonal good wishes to you all – whatever our faith or background this is a very special time of the year when we pause for moment and reflect on the year that has gone past and think about what is to come and enjoy a time of hospitality and company.

We look forward to many good things in 2010!

(Mrs) Jose Drabwell
Chairperson