One of this year’s autumn highlights was IPOPI’s Regional Latin American PID Patients’ Meeting, organised in parallel with the biennial Latin American Society for Immunodeficiencies (LASID) congress. The meeting took place on October 10-11 in Cancún, Mexico, and brought together patient representatives from a great majority of IPOPI’s Latin American National Member Organisations (NMOs).

We were happy to welcome participants from Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. The meeting began with IPOPI President Mrs Martine Pergent participating in the LASID grand opening session, which was followed by a two-day IPOPI meeting combining educational lectures, various workshops as well as a networking dinner.

During the two days of the meeting participants learnt about topics such as The ABC of PIDs and autoimmunity, Vaccination and PIDs, Plasma collection, Immunoglobulin therapies and many more. They were also given the chance to present the situation in their countries and the important work they are doing, providing the participants with the shortcut of learning from each other.

The meeting had an important advocacy scope, linking the international, regional and national environments. The meeting workshops challenged participants to simulate a meeting with the Ministry of Health, prepare and participate in a simulated press conference as well as develop a proposed strategic plan for their NMOs. The feedback from our participants has been very positive and we look forward to the next meeting, taking place in Santiago, Chile, in 2021.

Would you like to know more about this meeting? Visit IPOPI’s website to see the programme, presentations, the meeting report and the pictures!

This meeting was sponsored by Takeda.