Vitiligo Research Foundation European office secretariat, and on behalf of the VR Foundation Executive Scientific Committee, calls for nomination from each Scientific Community of all European Countries to the International School of Vitiligo & Pigmentary Disorders.
Barcelona, Spain – 2-5 November 2011

Dear Colleagues,

In today’s competitive world of Dermatology, education and continuous training are the key to success and employability.

Pigmentary Disorders of the skin are seen very often by the Dermatologists and not always properly diagnosed and treated.
Training supported and funded by the VRF provides you with the competitive edge because of its strong clinical-practical orientation in the field of Pigmentary Disorders of the Skin.

Following this residential interactive meeting funded by the VRF, the attendees will be able to :

– understand the biology of human melanocytes;
– develop a strategy to diagnose all clinical forms of vitiligo and related disorders and the other common ( benign and malignant) pigmentary disorders;
– identify the most rational and well accepted conventional and innovative therapies for treating both the symptoms and the signs of the pigmentary disorder and the self-esteem decline of the sufferers .

A special session for discussing the most paradigmatic clinical cases presented by the same attendees has been included in the scientific program.
Residents and practicing dermatologists will be encouraged to actively engage in the discussion at each and every stages of the workshop.

Each Scientific Community of all European Countries is entitled to appoint one resident or young practicing dermatologist as participant to the School in agreement with the National Dermatological Society .

Travel expenses up to Euro 250,00 , registration fees , hotel accommodation and meals will be offered by the VRF to each and every appointed attendee.” Moreover, the most brilliant participant in the research field and clinical cases presentation will be selected to receive a stipend of USD 12.000,00 for 2012, to encourage an active participation in the program.

Remaining at your disposal for any further informations you may require,

Prof. Dr. Torello Lotti , MD

Professor of Dermatology
Chairman , Executive Scientific Committe VR Foundation, Inc.
1, Penn plaza, suite 6205
New York, NY 10119 USA
Tel. 1-855 -966-3555
Email professor@torellolotti.it

VITSAF’s one major goal is to achieve extensive Vitiligo awareness and enlightenment amongst the general public and medical community in Africa and beyond. This we have started delivering thus our debut video productions. Our main approach to this is through entertainment.
D Productions –
• More to Life – A Documentary on Vitiligo (online version to be uploaded soon), contact us on vitsupng@gmail.com for a copy if you are willing to help us in publicizing Vitiligo Awareness
• Tales of Vitiligo – TV Fillers (for understanding effects of segregation and e everyday life experiences of a persons living with Vitiligo.

The links to Tales of Vitiligo on YouTube

Please do feel free to share this videos with everyone around you, if you have any questions as regards the videos and how you can work with us on it, do send an email to vitsupng@gmail.com.

We in VITSAF will be coming up with more productions later in the year 2011 with more productions – short story and a movie all to Vitiligo awareness, understanding autoimmune disorders, empowering the disfigured and daring it all, living positively in midst of all adversity.

Keep a date with us Vitiligo Support and Awareness Foundation (VITSAF) on www.vitsaf.org !!!

… having Vitiligo is not the cataclysmic calamity that a terminal cancer or severely disabling injury would be. But I do know that its effects on a person’s confidence and self-image can be quite devastating.

So I have no wish to overstate the plight of vitiligo sufferers or in any way dramatise or exaggerate the seriousness of the condition. But I do know, from my own experience, that the psychological impact of vitiligo is something that is very personal and is really not mitigated by making comparisons with other conditions or counting oneself lucky not to have cancer or be in a wheel chair instead.

I know that some people with vitiligo claim (and I don’t doubt their honesty) to have come to terms with the condition and are not bothered by it at all. Sadly I have never been one of them and I suspect they are in the minority. Granted, having vitiligo is not the cataclysmic calamity that a terminal cancer or severely disabling injury would be. But I do know that its effects on a person’s confidence and self-image can be quite devastating.

The unpredictable and progressive nature of the condition can cause an insidious erosion of one’s own sense of self. One day a familiar face looks back at you from the mirror and the next day you can see part of the picture fading and you know that in a few more days another piece of the jigsaw will have disappeared and a frightened, unfamiliar pair of eyes will be looking back at you from behind an altered facial landscape. A sudden change to the person you perceive yourself to be must be difficult enough to come to terms with. But an apparently random, mischievous, malevolent progressive alteration is unnerving at best and often panic inducing and deeply, deeply depressing. I suppose it has a lot to do with the fact that our skin is our outer packaging, our first impression to the world. Beauty is just skin deep, or so they say. It’s inextricably bound up with our own sense of identity, heredity, race and self-worth. And it’s not something that is supposed to change – apart from getting wrinkled with old age!

Caroline www.vitiligoprotocol.co.uk

Overtime I have been told by people, I really don’t see reasons why persons living with Vitiligo should be traumatized & stigmatized, it’s just a change in skin color…….. One of the persons who said this overtime to me could not step out of her house to go to work someday because she got acne on her face, I didn’t understand when she told me that go out with that acne bulging (you needed to see the size) out of her chin. I didn’t really understand because she has said overtime that there is nothing in looks and that she sees nothing one should fret about concerning Vitiligo, when I asked her what she would’ve done if she got Vitiligo, probably she won’t go to work ever in her life. She lost it and asked me how can I ever wish her Vitiligo? This is just one out of many.

Vitiligo is one condition that people do not really understand the impact, not only does it disfigure, its one condition that usually leaves it sufferers in misery, bondage and pains, People look at you and tell you I don’t know what you are bothered about yet they don’t want to make friends. A condition that usually starts out of the blues, everything will be just normal and suddenly there is a white spot that is usually being ignored then the journey of white spots blending into patches and so it continues, atimes takes over completely and atimes in huge patches depending on the pattern that has visited one.

Vitiligo, in spite of not being a rare disease, of being classified as a disease by the WHO (World Health Organization), is one of the most psychologically, psychosocially and emotionally devastating chronic skin condition, with a major impact on both patients and their families, Vitiligo is still today underrated and underestimated. Still today there are dermatologists who minimize the impact of the disease, who trivialize the condition or deceive patients’ expectations, leaving them vulnerable to therapies not proven effective. More reason so many living with it has resorted to self medication of trial and errors. Can you blame me for marrying natural therapies and home remedies which I have come to find out is actually the way to go now?

Till you experience it or find of yours in the situation where you are being stigmatized silently, misunderstood, segregated upon, stared at and atimes ridiculed for a condition you have no hand on how it came about, don’t have any help nor control over, you wouldn’t feel or understand how hard it can be for one to struggle to live as if all is well in the midst of trials, challenges & difficulties such as Vitiligo. Vitiligo has left people rejected by their loved ones, destroyed beautiful relationships out of ignorance, yearning for physical beauty and going by the surface (before you judge, you might do worse). Women are more vulnerable to this as we live in a society where men comes has it all going for them in relationships and marriage, when it happens to them the women are advised to stay and carry the burden with them but the other way round, it’s usually out of all the women in the world I can’t be trapped with this white and black thing.

Not so many people will be able to handle or live with this segregation, being stared at daily with comments and annoying explanations to what they see Vitiligo as. People have committed and attempted suicide, others have resorted to in-door living for the rest of their life, others move around living in misery, agony and in bondage of vitiligo.

What can a man who is emotionally and psychologically dead offer himself and the economy?

Ogo Maduewesi welcomes you and ask you that you keep a date with us as we will be treating ourselves to practical ways of living positively and Healthily.

Its in our hands to bless ourselves with Health and Positivity!

See you soon.

Compliments!!!