Founded | 1988 , Sweden |
---|---|
Headquarters | Geneva, Switzerland |
Key people
|
Chris Beyrer (President) |
Number of employees
|
52 (2016) |
Website | www |
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is an association of HIV professionals, with 11,035 members from 160 countries working at all levels of the global response to AIDS. IAS members include researchers from all disciplines, clinicians, public health and community practitioners on the frontlines of the epidemic, as well as policy and programme planners.
The IAS is the custodian of the biennial International AIDS Conference and the lead organizer of the IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention.
The current IAS President is Chris Beyrer. Past presidents have included Helene D. Gayle, Joep Lange, Peter Piot and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi. The IAS's headquarters are located in Geneva.
The IAS is a non-profit organization founded in 1988, with a mandate to organize the International AIDS Conference. Initially the IAS headquarters were in , and Lars-Olof Kallings was the secretary general from 1988 until 2003.
In 2004, the IAS restructured its organization, expanded the number of professional staff and moved the headquarters to Geneva. The move was intended to strengthen organizational links with other health NGOs and (United Nations) multilateral agencies.
The International AIDS Conference (abbreviated AIDS 2012, AIDS 2014 and so on) is the world's most attended conference on HIV and AIDS. These conferences started in 1985 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. They were held annually until 1994 when they became biennial. The most recent conference was in Durban, South Africa, in July 2016.
The twenty-second conference is scheduled for Amsterdam in July 2018
The International AIDS Conference is the largest regular conference, and it provides a forum for the interaction of science, community, leadership, and the strengthening of an evidence-based policy and programmatic responses to the epidemic. The conferences also allow an opportunity to intensify political and financial commitments to AIDS, and include the largest international conference scholarship program in HIV/AIDS.