[Press Kit, International Conference on AIDS (13th : 2000 : Durban, South Africa), compiled by the International AIDS Society]

IAS
INTER NATIONAL
SOCIETY
BACKGROUND NOTE
INTERNATIONAL AIDS SOCIETY (IAS)
The International AIDS Society (IAS) is a no-profit organization established during the
IV International Conference on AIDS (Stockholm, 1988), to organize subsequent world
conferences but also to act as a real network for anybody working in the field of HIV
infection.
Since then, the IAS has grown to include more than 10,000 members worldwide. The
IAS member are mostly scientists and physicians from more than 132 countries.
IAS scopes
The main scopes of IAS are:
* To participate in the control and management of HIV/AIDS infection worldwide,
also co-operating with other societies for the fight against AIDS both at a National
and International level, with the UNAIDS and other International organizations, non
governmental as well.
* To act as an open International forum for groups with scientific interests in the
HIV/AIDS area.
* To foster, coordinate and assess various activities aimed to control HIV/AIDS.
* To organize International conferences on HIV/AIDS, particularly the biennial
International Conference on AIDS and future conferences on pathogenesis and
clinical care of HIV infection.
* To arrange medical educational courses on HIV infection, particularly through its
own project named SHARE (a continuing medical education project aimed to
improve the clinical management and the prevention of HIV infection).
* To represent the scientific community as an authoritative reference in controversies
regarding AIDS, to fight the discrimination and foster the ethical aspects of scientific
research and health interventions.
* To foster the availability of proper resources for research, education and epidemic
control, hence reducing the burden of its consequences.
* To raise funding to support its own initiatives against HIV/AIDS.
* To act as a centralized register of people professionally involved in the HIV/AIDS
research and in activities related to treatment and prevention of HIV infection.
The role of IAS
The main IAS role is to represent the International scientific community. Science is the
key password to understand and control the HIV epidemic as the various progress had
shown: early identification of modes of transmission, identification of HIV as the

causative agent of AIDS, introduction of diagnostic tests, better understanding of
principal pathogenetic mechanisms, highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART)
introduction, and the reduction of mother to child transmission rates.