Every two years the Chronic Hypoxia Symposium is carried out in order to gather scientists from around the globe to present their work and discuss aspects of chronic exposure to hypoxia. The first three symposia, The Effect of Chronic Hypoxia on Diseases at High Altitude, were held in La Paz, Bolivia at 3510 m, the “shrine of hypoxia” and location of the High Altitude Pulmonary and Pathology Institute (IPPA), the first high-altitude clinic in the world, created on July 9th, 1970 by the late Prof. Dr. Gustavo Zubieta-Castillo Sr. The fourth symposium was carried out jointly with the Global Hypoxia Summit at the Defense Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences (DIPAS) in Delhi, India. The fifth and this last one, the sixth, returned to La Paz. It is an itinerant meeting, starting the first day in La Paz at 3500 m, the second in the Tiahuanacu ruins (3800 m), the third day at Lake Titicaca (3800 m), the highest navigable lake in the world, and the fourth day in Chacaltaya at 5300 m, where the Glass Pyramid Laboratory, the highest laboratory in the world, is located. The spirit of this symposium is an open mind to different concepts about exposure and life under chronic hypoxia, with a criterion that adaptation to chronic hypoxia is successful and often misunderstood.
