CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

The Scientific Committee of the 2021 Southern African HIV Clinicians Society Conference invites papers of high quality in HIV research relevant to the Southern Africa context. Work that introduces new research, ideas and understanding to the field is encouraged.

Deadline:  Abstracts must be submitted electronically by Monday, 13 September 2021.
Guidelines:  Abstracts must be submitted online. Abstract submissions are peer-reviewed for scientific content, logical presentation, and current interest of the topic to the scientific community.

A limited number of accepted abstracts will be considered for oral presentations.

TRACKS

1. Antiretroviral Treatment – This track includes sessions on new antiretroviral therapies and regimens, outcomes of existing antiretroviral therapy regimens, and ART toxicities.

2. Paediatric and Adolescent – This track includes sessions on the prevention and management of HIV and related conditions in paediatric and adolescent populations, to include PMTCT, neonatal treatment, outcomes and complications of ART, treatment failure, adolescent-specific challenges and retention in care.

3. Primary Health Care and Nursing – This track will include sessions to enhance the clinical skills of primary care practitioners working in the field of HIV. Emphasis will be on the challenges and strategies to managing HIV and other conditions in an outpatient setting.

4. Basic Science – This track includes HIV evolution and phylodynamics (intra- and inter-host); basic retrovirology; innate and adaptive immune responses; HIV pathogenesis/immune function and dysfunction; HIV/SIV Latency and Viral Reservoirs (Human and Animal Models); Host Genetics and Systems Biology; Transmission and Early Infection; Novel Treatment, Cure Strategies; Vaccine Development.

5. Opportunistic Infections (excluding TB) and Malignancies – This track includes prevention, diagnosis, treatment and complications of opportunistic infections. New strategies in prevention, new diagnostic tools, rapid point of care platforms for diagnosis.

6. HIV treatment failure and drug Resistance – This track includes sessions on HIV and TB drug resistance. Different strategies to detect HIV treatment failure and point of care viral load testing. Prevention, detection and management of drug resistance. Different platforms for genotypic resistance testing.

7. Operations Research – This track includes interventions at the facility or programmatic level that improve HIV prevention, care and treatment. Strategies to maintain retention in care.

8. Prevention – This track includes biomedical HIV prevention methods, treatment as prevention and structural and behavioural interventions to reduce HIV transmission.

9. TB – This track will cover all aspects of TB as it relates to HIV, including integration, co-management, complications and M/XDR TB.

10. Women’s Health – This track includes sessions specific to women at risk of or living with HIV including fertility, HIV in pregnancy, long-term impacts of ART in women and cervical cancer.

11. Private Sector – This track includes discussions around managed care, balancing HIV within a busy private practice, and managing patients between private and public care

12. Key Populations – This track focuses on most at risk populations and the special needs and issues affecting these key populations, such as sex workers, adolescent girls, men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and transgender populations, among others. 

13. Non-Communicable Diseases – This track focuses on diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, renal and liver disease, and obesity, in people with concomitant HIV. 

15. Ethics – This track addresses the many ethical and legal issues health care workers may face when working with HIV.
16. Clinical Skills Building – This track includes interactive, case-based sessions and practical skills-based sessions. Clinical cases submitted should comprise of clinical scenarios that highlight valuable lessons and or key teaching points for the clinician at the coal face. Unusual or complex presentations that highlight the intricacies of HIV clinical decision-making are welcome. Cases should encompass HIV and related opportunistic conditions. Accepted cases will be presented to an expert panel for discussion.

Awards: The conference scientific committee will select the top 8 data-driven abstracts, which will be featured in a “best abstracts” session during the conference and published online in 2021 in the Southern African Journal of HIV Medicine.