NEWS FROM THE CHAIR

Greetings on behalf of the Interim Board of isirv and an especially warm welcome to newcomers to the Society’s membership. This message is to update you on recent progress with isirv activities.

The New Journal

An important development in recent months has been the agreement between Blackwell Publishing and isirv establishing the new journal Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses (www.influenzajournal.com). The first issue appeared in January 2007.

We are very pleased that Dr. Alan Hampson (Melbourne, Australia) has been appointed Editor in Chief and he will be well supported by a distinguished Editorial Board. It is excellent news that as part of the agreement, all members of isirv will receive Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses free of charge.

The journal will appear, as far as possible, every two months and cover a broad range of topics within the field of respiratory virology including surveillance in man and animals, epidemiology, vaccines and antivirals, clinical studies, basic scientific research, public health, and veterinary medicine. Your Board views the new journal as making a key contribution to isirv’s mission as the first international, professional scientific body dedicated to influenza and respiratory virology.

We look forward to the support of isirv members in their efforts to ensure success of Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses. Please, offer your views on the quality and contents of the journal; and the editors would be very pleased to review for publication articles from members and their collaborators. Authors can request open access and traceability; and Blackwell Publishing will be working to get the journal listed as quickly as possible on services such as PubMed.

We wish you all good reading and good writing! Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses promises to provide a valuable forum for information exchange and international collaboration.

Collaboration with WHO

One of the declared objectives of isirv is to support and develop partnership on international activities with agencies such as WHO. During the initial launch events for isirv, WHO expressed enthusiasm for working collaboratively with isirv. We have now followed up on this opportunity by participating in several face-to-face discussions with senior WHO officials in influenza and related fields. In these useful meetings a number of options for isirv/WHO interactions were considered, including joint organization of international meetings and consultations, organization of training workshops including events relevant to pandemic preparedness, and also meetings to establish consensus formulation on key public health topics.

The first example of a joint meeting was the recent WHO/isirv/FIND diagnostics consultation held at WHO, Geneva, on 19-20 February 2007 on the subject of Diagnosis of H5N1 (Avian) Influenza Infection in Humans. isirv played a key role in formulating the programme, chairing, and providing presentations. Some fifty participants attended and the meeting was highly successful as a forum of interchange between scientists and the commercial sector. A report of this meeting will be published in Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses.

Views of isirv members on possible future topics and venues would be welcome.

isirv’s Contribution to Other Scientific Symposia

isirv has been pleased to act as a sponsor and participant in several scientific symposia related to influenza in the past year, including:

1. Avian influenza: The first pandemic of the 21st Century, London, 19-20 January 2006, organized by Retroscreen Virology.
2. New Cells for New Vaccines: A symposium addressing novel approaches to the development and production of influenza and other vaccines in plant and insect cell systems. Held 28-29 September 2006, Coral Gables, Florida, USA. This successful meeting was held under the auspices of the International Association for Biologicals (IABs) and InB: Biotechnologies, Inc. of Newark, Delaware, USA.

Options for the Control of Influenza VI – 17-23 June 2007, Toronto, Canada.
From the launch of isirv, it was agreed that a key role of the Society would be to act as the ‘umbrella’ body ensuring that high quality Options for the Control of Influenza conferences will continue to take place in future.

The next Options conference has been arranged for 17-23 June in Toronto and several isirv members are involved in organizational, planning, scientific presentation and chairing roles. Arrangements have also been made for a Blackwell Publishing stand to promote the new journal, Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses.

The Interim Board has also begun the process of seeking a host for the next Options event, set for 2010. If you would be interested or know others who might be, please let us know (isirv@somhealy.demon.co.uk).

Arrangements are also being made to hold, at a convenient time during this year’s Options conference, the first Annual General Meeting (AGM) of isirv. This will be an important opportunity for members to come together and set the direction of activity.

A process of election of a substantive Board is also beginning and will complete at the AGM in Toronto. Please see the attached letter from our Administrator, explaining the electoral process and inviting you to put yourself or other members forward to be on the next Board.

We look forward to seeing as many isirv members as possible in Toronto, joining us in discussions on the future development of isirv.

Charitable Status for isirv

Good progress has been made towards registration and creation of a formal legal status for isirv. Soon after our launch, the Interim Board agreed that registration in the United Kingdom was the most practical option, offering useful legal safeguards for the organization and its members.

UK registration does, however, involve several stages. The first, becoming a company limited by guarantee (that gives the protections of company law but in a form appropriate for a not-for-profit agency) was completed in December 2006. The next is registration as a ‘charity’. The Charity Commission recently told us they were minded to accept us but asked for a small change to the wording of our purposes. This was agreed by the Board in February. Once charity status is finalized, the last stage will be registering with the tax authorities to ensure exemption from corporation tax. It’s all a bit long-winded but in the end will give us a firm legal and tax-exempt position appropriate for a not-for-profit organization.

Keeping in Touch with Members

We are looking to improve communications with members, and indeed the broader community. There have been a number of technical difficulties and we apologize to those of you who have had problems with the web membership facility or in receiving the newsletter, the new journal, or other communications. We and the agency which assists us, MediTech Media Conferencing, are working these out.

We are also constrained by our limited size and lack of resources. So, we are happy that we have managed to send out several editions of the newsletter. We would like, however, to have made better use of our website (www.isirv.org). The Board is dealing with this as a matter of urgency and aims over the coming months to make the website a more active tool for information exchange.

Send us your news for inclusion in website or newsletter. They can be active tools for keeping each other up-to-date if you help and contribute. For now, send contributions to isirv@somhealy.demon.co.uk.

Future Challenges for isirv

isirv depends very heavily on the annual subscriptions of members. The number of members is increasing gently and steadily but we are still a very small organization with limited financial resources. We would like to encourage our current members to attract additional membership from among their professional contacts.

In addition, the isirv Board needs urgently to find acceptable ways of improving and supplementing our finances so that we have sufficient funds to support our future activities and growth.

Finally, I would like to thank you for joining isirv. The isirv Board looks forward to working closely with all our members to further develop the Society’s scientific and professional activities. Please contact us with your comments and views on future developments.

Kindest regards,

Geoffrey Schild

Appendix

Since our launch, the international make-up of the Interim Board, whose mandate runs until the AGM in June 2007, has been considerably broadened. Members at present are: