Dear friends,
one year ago I closed my greeting message on behalf of the newly elected Board with these words: “Let’s walk together with confidence towards our common goals”.
In the articles below you will be able to see how the national member associations have “walked” to develop their activities in support of aniridia patients, often in difficult situations but always with enthusiasm and a forward-looking approach. We really want to congratulate them all!
The Board too hasn’t stopped dedicating time and commitment to the various projects that Aniridia Europe is involved in.
The COST Action Aniridia-Net has celebrated its final meeting in Venice at the end of June and will publish the final outcomes (among them, the European consensus document on the clinical management of aniridia and the survey on the social impact of the disease) by the end of the year. To report about it, our digital team organised a webinar with prof. Neil Lagali and dr. Stefano Ferrari (held within the digital event realized for Aniridia Day 2023) and interviewed five top scientists in Venice; you can watch all the interviews on Aniridia Europe’s YouTube channel. Here below Aniridia Europe’s staff at the meeting: from left Ivana, Barbara, Katie, Marjorie, Elena (and Matteo, on the other side of the camera :-)
One of the most important results of Aniridia-Net is that the networking of scientists has created the opportunities for new projects, one of which has already started, as you can read in the press release. Its name, Restore Vision, is very ambitious and promising and we are really excited about it!
Among the activities of the next months there are also the social projects such as the Erasmus+ Seeing the invisible (on school inclusion) that is going to be concluded in autumn, and the new Erasmus+ project Together for inclusion. Young people with low vision for active participation, awareness and associationism around the world, that has just started with a meeting in Rome on the 5th May.
Moreover, the scientific and organising committee of the 7th European Aniridia Conference (Stockholm, Sweden, 31 May-2 June 2024) is working hard to finalise the programme and the activities.
We continue our contacts with the other aniridia organisations to join and coordinate our efforts, and this is why we wanted to celebrate Aniridia Day 2023 together with an online greeting from all around the world.
Finally, I want to thanks all the volunteers and the national associations that support Aniridia Europe and ensure their continuous collaboration. Nothing of what I have listed above would be possible without our common work and commitment.
All the best
Barbara Poli
Presidente of the Aniridia Europe Board of Members