Adeeba Kamarulzaman named President of the International AIDS Society

The International AIDS Society (IAS) has announced nine newly elected and three re-elected members to its Governing Council. Adeeba Kamarulzaman of Malaysia is the new IAS President and Sharon Lewin of Australia the President-Elect, with Jennifer Kates of the United States serving as Treasurer.

Kamarulzaman will be the first President of the organisation from an Asian country.

“The new members joining the IAS Governing Council add a great diversity of skills and experiences,” Kamarulzaman said. “They will be pivotal in steering IAS into the future and dealing with a fast-changing scientific, social and political landscape. I am particularly happy to announce that, for the first time, our Governing Council is majority female with 13 women and 12 men.”

The Governing Council determines strategy and policy direction for IAS to ensure that the organization fulfils its mission of leading collective action on every front of the global HIV response.

IAS Executive Director, Kevin Osborne said the new council would be focussed on many aspects of tackling the HIV pandemic including battling stigma and discrimination.

“The HIV epidemic continues to require collaborative leadership across regions and disciplines that this Governing Council represents,” Osborne said. “This new Governing Council is deeply committed to driving the HIV response on the many fronts that will require our attention, not least the remaining challenge of widespread stigma and discrimination.”

A graduate of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, trained in Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases, Adeeba Kamarulzaman is currently Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Malaya, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Yale University, USA. She established the Infectious Diseases Unit at the University of Malaya Medical Centre and, in 2008, the Centre of Excellence for Research in AIDS (CERiA) at the same university.

As convener of the Malaysian Harm Reduction Working Group of the Malaysian AIDS Council, she successfully advocated for the implementation of harm reduction measures to tackle HIV amongst people who inject drugs in Malaysia. She was President of the Malaysian AIDS Council from 2006 to 2010 where she remains an Executive Committee member. She also serves as Chairwoman of the Malaysian AIDS Foundation.

Kamarulzaman has been involved in several regional and international organizations including TREAT Asia, the International Society of Infectious Diseases, and was Co-Chair of the WHO Strategic and Technical Advisory Committee on HIV and is presently a member of the UNAIDS Advisory Group. She was the Scientific Co-Chair of the 18th International AIDS Conference in Vienna in 2010 and local chair of the 7th IAS Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention (now IAS Conference on HIV Science) in Kuala Lumpur in 2013. In April 2015 she received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from her alma mater, Monash University, for her outstanding achievements in medicine.

Source: Media Release

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