XX Guest Symposium Opens: 30 Years of Bridging Science and Community

Pedro Cahn, an infectious disease physician, recalls being criticized by some colleagues for “for having patients and community members discuss HIV at a conference,” a fusion that has historically characterized Huésped Foundation scientific symposiums , the symposium kicks off with the 20th 30 years after the first meeting, the novelty of long-term therapy and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) is a prominent biomedical topic.

“International AIDS conferences have always been held in English, not everyone speaks English, and even those who can afford to travel or see the conference now actually miss many details; therefore, we are hosting this workshop Part of the organization’s mission. The purpose of the foundation is to share knowledge with professionals and the community,” Kahn said in a conversation with Télam.

Kahn, Huésped’s founder and scientific director, recalls a fellow diabetologist approaching him in the hospital in the first few years, asking if they had really grown patient enough to talk at the dinner table.

“When I told him yes, he replied that it was ‘very rare’ and I replied that at their congress it would be very useful to hear from someone who has to inject insulin twice a day to see how they feel , ” he recalled.

For experts, “doctors and researchers can learn a lot from civil society, social scientists, and they can learn from us; it’s a way of socializing knowledge.”

In 1993, when the first symposium was held, highly active antiretroviral therapy was not yet available, so people living with HIV could get symptom-relieving drugs, but the disease was in an advanced stage. After the introduction of these treatments, commonly known as cocktails, in 1996, the disease became chronic.

“At the World AIDS Conference in Vancouver, Canada in 1996, we heard for the first time that not only could the viral load be temporarily lowered, but that this drop could last as long as the patient was on the drug.” It was very strong. The same thing happened at the symposium when we made the announcement here, and the impact was huge,” Kahn said.

The scientific director of Huésped recalls that the pivotal moment of these 20 meetings was when Julio Montaner (Argentinian epidemiologist based in Canada) introduced to the local community the concept of cure as prevention, now called Undetectable = Untransmissible (I = I) This means that if a person is on treatment with an undetectable viral load, then they cannot transmit the virus.

He added: “The idea was a big hit, and it was also powerful when we first came up with the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEp) strategy of providing treatment to highly exposed people who didn’t have the virus.”

Huésped executive director Leandro Cahn pointed out that when the World AIDS Conference began to be held every two years, the same thing happened in Argentina.

“By the middle of 2010, new antiviral treatments for hepatitis C came out, and then in the years we didn’t have HIV/AIDS seminars, we held conferences related to the disease until finally, After starting to study other issues related to sexual and reproductive health due to the broadening of the foundation’s horizons, we decided to return to the annual format,” he told Télam.

Currently, the symposium features two parallel rooms and plenary sessions where health experts, social scientists and the community come together to discuss not only HIV and hepatitis C but all sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis (a pathology) This has been growing in recent years – as well as talking about treatments and science news, the conference also discusses health, community prevention strategies and rights.

“We seek to have a real dialogue between biomedical, social and political decision-makers, three pillars. This is a very specific feature of the global HIV movement, unlike other diseases, it is not a patient’s table at a scientific conference, but It’s the interaction that happens all the time,” assures Leandro Cahn.

The twentieth edition, which runs from today to Friday, features new features in medical topics such as long-term treatment and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEp) strategies; also includes metabolic complications in virally infected patients and treatment initiation on the day of diagnosis.

On the other hand, issues such as practical and legal barriers to health for sex workers will be addressed; topics such as Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and community engagement and interdisciplinary contributions to joint prevention. (Teram)