Argwings-Kodhek and Dr. Colmegna recently attended the 2010 ACR/ARHP Annual Scientific Meeting in Atlanta together. The meeting helped Argwings-Kodhek gather a mass of information and written materials about lupus to share with group members. The two also presented poster data relating to lupus in East Africa.
“Coming to the meeting was a good opportunity for me to network, learn more, go back, and teach people,” Argwings-Kodhek says.
Rashmi B. Dixit, MD, PhD, associate clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, is involved with the rheumatology curriculum for the University of Nairobi. “Even in this day and age, there are communities with no rheumatology support at all,” she says. By training even a small number of workers, well-informed knowledge about diseases such as lupus can be shared with a larger group throughout the country and East Africa,” Dr. Dixit says.
Among her goals for the support group, Argwings-Kodhek would like the group to become well known throughout the world, receive more funding to help patients, and have a Lupus Day to create awareness.
Vanessa Caceres is a medical writer in Bradenton, Florida.
