Dear Colleagues,

I hope that this finds you in good health and spirits.

At the outset, I would urge all IRA members to organize events next month as a part of IRA’s Rheumatology Awareness Month April 2025. Like yesteryears, this could be offline or online, in various formats, for clinicians, patients or the lay public, big or small; be creative and help us spread the word!

We all are looking forward to our flagship event IRACON 2025 which shall be held from 9^th-12^th October in New Delhi this year. This preponement, necessitated by environmental factors implies that the IRA elections will follow a revised schedule which I have already communicated by email.  Please keep on visiting IRACON 2025 for updates.

The IRA’s webinar series “IRA eConnect 2024-2025” has plans for diverse and engaging content this year. Its first grand round this year on “Cell Therapy for Autoimmune Diseases” by Prof George Schett from Germany generated huge interest and was very well attended.

The IRA strives to support rapid progress in all areas of rheumatology including clinical care and research. A limited number of travel support is available for rheumatology trainees or IRA members below 40 years of age who have their abstracts accepted at conferences abroad.

As a member of the IRA, you can apply for funding for your research. Please visit GRANTS (indianrheumatology.org) for more details and to apply. To propagate the awareness of rheumatic diseases among UGs and postgraduate trainees, IRA’s support is available for our members who wish to organize IRA UG-PG Rheumatology CME in teaching institutions.

Please keep visiting the Indian Journal of Rheumatology: Sage Journals (sagepub.com) to read interesting articles. Please do consider the Indian Journal of Rheumatology which is the official organ of the IRA for your next submission.

As a stakeholder, your views are very important. Please mail me your suggestions and queries at secretary@indianrheumatology.org.