Brazilian researcher to chair International AIDS Society

Brazilian infectologist and researcher Beatriz Grinsztejn will be the first Latin American woman to serve as chair of the International AIDS Society (IAS), which brings together professionals who work with the disease. She will take office for 2024–2026 next Friday (Jul. 26) at the end of the 25th International AIDS Conference in Munich, Germany.

Grinsztejn, a researcher at the Evandro Chagas National Institute of Infectious Diseases (INI/Fiocruz), said she will be taking Brazil’s positive experiences in HIV treatment and prevention to international audiences. The country, she noted, has become a role model in the field and boasts a “spectacular” program that provides free and universal access to Brazilians through the country’s the unified health care network, the SUS.

“In Brazil we have access to the best in terms of treatment as well as prevention, which sets us apart from most Latin American countries, where pre-exposure prophylaxis is still not accessible to citizens through their public health care system,” she said in an interview with Empresa Brasil de Comunicação (EBC).

She also advocated increasing funding for research in the country.

“Brazil continues to shine on the international stage, but we need the country to gain more visibility, to be able to raise more funds for research and demonstrate the power of what’s being done in our country to the whole world. That’s why we should have in charge of the society someone from the region,” she stated.

The conference

Organized by the International AIDS Society, the 25th International AIDS Conference will be held until Friday (26), bringing together people who live, are affected by, or work with, HIV and AIDS, and offer them an opportunity to share knowledge and information about the response to the epidemic over the last 40 years.