Respected Seniors and Dear Friends,

I hope you are keeping well. I am very happy to share that the ‘Rheumatology diseases awareness month of April was celebrated with enthusiasm second year in a row this year. There were lot of awareness activities carried out by our members on ankylosing spondylitis day and lupus day also. This edition of the eNewsletter has a compilation of all these activities that were carried out in different parts of the country. These activities have been widely appreciated by the lay public and go a long way to increase awareness about our specialty.

I am sure you all are looking forward to IRACON 2023 to be held at Hyderabad from November 23^rd-26^th, 2023. Theme of this conference is ‘Crossing frontiers in Rheumatology’. The organizing committee under the chairmanship of Prof G Narsimulu sir’s guidance has made great efforts to make it a big scientific extravaganza. An exciting scientific program is being crafted by Dr. R Varaprasad, Chairman of the scientific committee, and his team. The organizing secretary Dr. Rajkiran has left no stone unturned to make it a memorable meeting for each one of you. It is going to be a great exposition of rheumatology in India. The abstract submission has started. I request all of you to submit abstracts of the work being carried out by you so that we can showcase the excellent work being carried out in different parts of our beautiful country. To know more about the conference, you can visit the conference website https://iracon2023.com. I would soon be sharing information about the orations and awards. Please look out for these on the IRA website also. This information would also be sent by email to all the members. If any member is not receiving the emails from the secretariat or he/she wishes to change his/her email/address/phone number then please send an email to secretary@indianrheumatology.org.

I have shared the information about ACR-APLAR Exchange Program with everyone on your emails. The last date of submission is June 30^th, 2023.

IRA has streamlined the IRA membership and research funding process. The research proposals are being handled in a time bound manner.

Please take care and stay safe

Regards
Aman Sharma