JUN 30, 2105

Colombia – Spreading medical awareness of PIDs

Fundación Diana García de Olarte para las Inmundeficiencias Primarias (FIP) concentrates a lot of its work on Continued Medical Education (CME). For World Primary Immunodeficiencies Week (WPIW) we held the “RED IDPnet” (National Network for PIDs) and an annual National Symposium on PID.  In Colombia it has been very difficult to get our local physicians to attend national event so this time we have been taking these events to different cities in Colombia such as Medellin, Bogotá and Cali, this year we organised it in Bucaramanga.

The 6th Meeting of IDPnet and the 5th National Symposium on PIDs were organised on May 29 and 30, respectively to not clash with larger scientific meetings taking place in April.
More than 20 physicians from different medical specialties attended the Meeting of IDPnet. They work in Bogotá, Cali, Bucaramanga, Neiva and Medellín in PID units that are leaded by the Group of Primary Immunodeficiencies of the University of Antioquia and a JMF Diagnostic and Referral Center for Colombia.
The 5th National Symposia on PIDs was well received in the medical community with more than 100 physicians, medical students, microbiologists attending. The program focused on Diagnosis and Treatment (with emphasis on patients’ access to treatment issues, the new Law for Rare Diseases and other topics), and there was half a day dedicated to discuss and illustrate PID through clinical cases shared by speakers from all over Colombia.
With this 5th edition of the Symposia we are reached a milestone – more than 650 attendants in this Educational Initiative. Next year we will go to the city of Barranquilla in the Caribbean and we hope we can continue creating awareness for these diseases and adding more physicians to our Network in Colombia.