Professionals
What is PIDDSA? Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases South Africa, an active Working Group of ALLSA for several years already.
What does PIDDSA do? The main aim is to promote Primary Immunodeficiency (PID) awareness and education and to network with health professionals interested in PID within Southern Africa. To achieve this, a working group partnership with ALLSA was established for PIDDSA.
What has PIDDSA achieved so far? Every ALLSA Congress has offered a PID session or talk since 2006. With the support of ALLSA, PIDDSA co-hosted the first English speaking ASID (African Society for Immunodeficiency ) Congress in Sun City in 2013. PIDDSA organizes PID Schools, the third one linked to the 2015 ALLSA congress is taking place in Port Elizabeth. PIDDSA has also supported an African A Project PID workshop in 2014 in Lusaka, Zambia. The PID123 cartoon series and dedicated PID articles for the ALLSA journal were initiated this year.
What does PIDDSA need? The current informal core group of individuals needs the support of active members to assist with guidelines, webpage design and population, workshop and congress organization. To this end PIDDSA circulated a questionnaire list of iServe and iOffer at ALLSA Congress 2014 in Durban, where some of you listed your names and services relevant to PID. We now need the commitment of these and other interested individuals to do the work that lies ahead with the many diagnostic, treatment and health challenges ahead for PID in SA.
Meet us at the upcoming ALLSA Congress and come to “The PID School “ for exciting talks, trade symposiums and case discussions with our guest speaker Klaus Warnatz from Freiburg, Germany, an expert in PID and Autoimmunity and our local faculty. We look forward to see you there !
Monika Esser (Chair)
Andre van Niekerk (Treasurer and ALLSA liaison), Jonny Peter (Guidelines)