Dear friends,
Barcelona was the host city of the ESID/INGID/IPOPI Biennial Meeting last month and IPOPI was once again delighted to work hand in hand with ESID (European Society for Immunodefiencies) and INGID (International Nursing Group for Immunodeficiencies) on this occasion and to be in a position to bring together close to 100 patient organisations representatives to the successful conference.
As far as IPOPI is concerned this was our 14th Biennial Meeting and the second one organised in Spain after Sitges in 1994. Let me start by congratulating the winners of the IPOPI PID Champions Awards Ceremony held during the meeting: Dr Teresa Espanol (Spain) winner of the LeBien Award and Mr Geoffrey Yu (Hong Kong) winner of the Luciano Vassalli Award.

The IPOPI programme featured educational lectures on various topics such as SCID (Severe Combined Immunodeficiency) newborn screening, treatment updates, management of gastrointestinal issues as well as an excellent session organised by IPOPI’s Medical Advisory Panel which summarised the main highlights of the ESID scientific programme. I would like to take the opportunity of this editorial to thank all our expert speakers and with special thanks to Professor Martin Van Hagen for the moderation of the MAP session.

The meeting was also an opportunity to organise a series of practical skills building workshops, including on NMOs main challenges and most successful projects over the last two years, implementation of the Principles of Care, fundraising and ideas worth spreading among others. Of course this year’s Biennial was also the time of IPOPI’s Board elections and I would like to warmly welcome our new Board members: John Seymour (USA), Andrea Gressani (Italy), Violetta Kozhereva (Russia) and Bruce Lim (Malaysia). I look forward to working with them in the coming two years which promise to be filled with new activities and projects.

Of course IPOPI has also been working hard in the last months with the IPIC2017 Organising and Scientific Committees on the programme of the 3rd International Primary Immunodeficiencies Congress (IPIC2017) which will be held in Dubai on 8-10 November 2017. The congress website was launched in September and I invite all of our e-News readers to visit the site in order to get the latest information on this exciting international PID conference on clinical management.

As always, e-News remains a platform to showcase the successful work of IPOPI’s growing family of national member organisations and I invite you to read the numerous articles included in this edition.
Last but not least I extend a warm welcome to all of our new National Member Organisations (NMOs) who have become full members in Barcelona including: Bolivia, Brazil, Slovakia, Thailand, Ukraine and Vietnam. Many other new associate NMOs have also recently joined IPOPI and I look forward to welcoming them as full members at our General Assembly in 2018!

Happy reading to all,
Jose Drabwell