Haemochromatosis UK have taken the very difficult decision to postpone this year’s conference which was to be held in Manchester on Saturday the 4^th of April due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Over the last week, we have been monitoring the Government and WHO advice and assessing the possible risks to our members if we were to continue to hold the event.

As a charity representing many members in the 60+ category, some of whom may have underlying health conditions, we believe that this heightens our risk profile and it would therefore be unwise to bring members together from all over the country at this time.

We had a very interesting group of speakers lined up to present on the day of the conference and we hope to be able to reschedule this event for later in the year.

We are currently looking at holding the Annual General meeting (AGM) virtually, by streaming it over the internet and will be in contact with our members soon to give details and instructions of how this will work.  For those members that are unfamiliar with this or do not have connectivity to the internet we will be looking to send out proxy voting forms instead. We believe that this is allowed for within our constitution.

This has been an extremely difficult decision to make and one the Board of Trustees has not taken lightly. The welfare and health of our members is paramount and this has been at the forefront of our minds in making this decision.

The charity's office team will notify members with information relating to refunds for conference tickets. Everyone will receive a full refund for tickets already purchased. We are hoping that by taking the decision to postpone now we will have pre-empted many members from having booked their travel for the event.

For further information on coronavirus and genetic haemochromatosis, check out our regularly updated briefing.