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

IAS
INTERNATIONAL
SOCIETY
practical, well-defined problems. It is expected that the practical approaches developed
during these courses will be the result of a united effort between IAS experts and local
health authorities and workers.
Each course is designed in order to create a core module that can be tailored on the
specific local needs that are identified via a pre-course focused survey carried out through
a specifically designed questionnaire.
The Program promotes and favors the implementation of secondary follow-up courses in
order to spread the knowledge and the professional growth of health care providers
throughout the targeted countries.
Each course involves break out groups, which should be a maximum size of 15. Therefore
the maximum meeting size is 90 to 100. Efforts are made in order to arrange each course
back-to-back with national HIV/AIDS meetings to ensure optimum attendance and reduce
travel and accommodation costs of participants.
Medical education according to SHARE
Each course consists of presentations and of interactive break-out sessions that concentrate
on the practical interpretation of the information presented. There are opportunities for
specific questions and open discussion of the course topic. Adequate time is scheduled for
informal interaction to allow further networking and information exchange among those
attending the meeting, further enhancing the values of course attendance.
By taking this approach to course size and structure, participants are able to:
* Grasp the essential elements of recent advances in our understanding of HIV
infection, its prevention and its management.
* Learn practical strategies to facilitate optimal patient management.
* Discuss rationale approaches to overcoming local issues.
* Tackle specific patient management problems.
* Determine the best way to interpret new research findings and apply them to dayto-day clinical practice.
At the close of each meeting, participants are invited to draw up a set of clear, workable
objectives for local implementation. Where appropriate and practicable, a subsequent
meeting of participants will be arranged for a later date, in order to assess the extent to
which these objectives have been met and to address any issues that have arisen as a
result of local implementation of new practices.
SHARE Committees and past course
The SHARE Steering Committee includes:
S. Vella (Chair), R.Badar6, D. Cooper, L. Kallings, J. Phair, M. Wainberg.
The SHARE Scientific Committee includes several International experts in the field of HIV
infection:
R. Badar6, G. Biberfeld, P. Cahn, R. Chan, D. Cooper, J. Coovadia, K. De Cock, G.
Echeverria de Perez, P. Figueroa, G. Friedland, S. Hammer, M. Hirsch, D. Ho, R. Ismail, M.