African delegates in various research and conferences scheduled to take place in Europe have slammed “infuriating” travel challenges by European consulates and call for meetings on the issuance of visas for researchers to be held in welcoming countries.

A number of developing country delegates struggled to obtain visas to attend two public health conferences in France this month, reviving calls for such meetings to be held in more accessible locations.

‘Expensive and time-consuming’

Frustrated delegates took to social media in the lead-up to the two conferences to air their concerns.

Jayne Sutherland, head of TB research at the Medical Research Council/London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine unit in The Gambia, said three of her study clinicians had been unable to travel to The Union meeting. Two of them were scheduled to give oral presentations.

“So disappointing for all concerned. Not to mention expensive and time-consuming since applications could only be made in Dakar, a 10h drive from here,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on 13 November. She later confirmed they could not travel.

Visa woes hamstrung Africans heading to Paris from the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) biennial forum last week, as well as to The Union World Conference on Lung Health, the global tuberculosis and lung disease conference, underway from 15-18 November.

Organisers of The Union conference said last week the reports were “disturbing” since they had done all they could to support visa applications, “including emailing embassies about the urgent need to issue visas and supporting documentation”.

Earlier this year, the International Aids Society announced it would start to rotate its conferences geographically after its 2022 conference in Canada saw numerous delegates, especially from Africa, unable to secure visas to travel.

Rosheen Sungeni Mthawanji, a mosquito virology PhD student based in Malawi, said she had been denied a visa to come to the EDCTP conference, despite being fully sponsored and submitting all required documents. “It doesn’t make sense and it’s so infuriating!” she wrote on X.

Stephen Shikoli, a coordinator of TB community health workers in Kenya and a scheduled speaker at The Union conference, also posted about his visa denial, attaching an image of a receipt for 80 euros for his visa application fee. “Communities matter if we want to end TB,” he wrote.

Calling out consulates

African delegates even struggled to secure initial meetings with their regional French consulates to submit their visa applications.

In September, Toyin Togun, a TB researcher at the MRC/LSTHM unit in The Gambia, posted a letter he’d sent to the French consulate in Senegal urging it to respond to requests for visa application appointments for four of his colleagues.

He was not alone. Beate Kampmann, who leads vaccine research at the MRC/LSHTM unit, posted that she’d had the same struggles with colleagues in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Togun told Research Professional News this week that all four of his colleagues had managed to attend the conferences. “I guess calling out the embassy worked,” he said.

But he added that the global health community needed to “do better” in choosing where to locate conferences. “It’s sad seeing the number of colleagues from Africa who are still being denied visas to attend.”

The Union conference organisers said the meeting would be held in a low- and middle-income country next year. “We hope this will ease the visa process,” it said.