|
|
|
South Africa
Tests AIDS Vaccine Its Scientists Developed With Help From US
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, Jul. 19, 2009 – South Africa is launching
clinical trials of the first AIDS vaccines created by a developing
country, a feat by scientists who forged ahead even when some of their
political leaders shocked the world with unscientific pronouncements
about the disease.
Trials to test the safety in humans of the vaccines begin this month on
36 healthy volunteers, Anthony Mbewu, president of South Africa's
government-supported Medical Research Council, said in an interview
Sunday. Mbewu's respected organization shepherded the project.
A trial of 12 volunteers in the United States began earlier this year.
Mbewu said the vaccine was designed at the University of Cape Town with
technical help from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which also
manufactured the vaccine.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Disease and a leading AIDS researcher, was in South
Africa for the launch.
During nearly 10 years of denial and neglect, South Africa developed a
staggering AIDS crisis. Around 5.2 million South Africans were living
with HIV last year _ the highest number of any country in the world.
Young women are hardest hit, with one-third of those aged 20 to 34
infected with the virus.
In 1999, the ministries of health and of science and technology founded
the vaccine initiative and poured 250 million rand into it over nearly
10 years.
Some 250 scientists and technicians worked on the project, along the way
gaining scores of doctorates and producing work for professional
publications as well as a model for continued biotechnology development
in South Africa.
The government decided it was important to develop a vaccine
specifically for the HIV subtype C strain that is prevalent in southern
Africa "and to ensure that once developed, it would be available at an
affordable price," Mbewu said.
"We have the biggest problem" in the world, Mbewu said on the sidelines
of an international AIDS conference in Cape Town.
"Every emerging country is trying, wants to develop their own capacity
to design and develop vaccines _ Brazil, Korea," Mbewu said.
But the South Africans are the first to reach the clinical trial stage,
though years of testing will be needed.
The field of AIDS vaccine research is so filled with disappointments
some activists are questioning the wisdom of continuing such expensive
investments, saying the money might be better spent on prevention and
education.
Mbewu said the crisis in South Africa more than justifies the
expenditure.
"With 5.2 million already infected and with hundreds getting infected
every day despite all the condom distribution and behavioral education
programs, we know that a vaccine really is what we need," he said.
And he said there are many other benefits. The cadre of South African
scientists now able to develop complex technological vaccines for HIV
can use that same expertise to fight tuberculosis and avian flu.
"When the next influenza pandemic hits the world, every country will be
scrambling to develop a vaccine ... so it is important that countries
like South Africa have the technology and capacity to develop vaccines
and the industry to manufacture them," Mbewu said.
South Africa was the site of the biggest setback to AIDS vaccine
research, when the most promising vaccine ever, produced by Merck & Co.
and tested in a study in South Africa in 2007, found that people who got
the vaccine were more likely to contract HIV than those who did not.
In the 1990s, South Africa's then-President Thabo Mbeki denied the link
between HIV and AIDS, and his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang,
mistrusted conventional anti-AIDS drugs and made the country a laughing
stock trying to promote beets and lemon as AIDS remedies.
At the conference opening, co-chairman Dr. Hoosen Jerry Coovadia
reminded the thousands of scientists, researchers, doctors and activiss
of the importance the international scientific community had made to
South Africa's progress in mounting an effective AIDS response in 2000,
when the largest international AIDS meeting was held in the South
African port city of Durban.
Some 5,000 scientists signed the Durban declaration that affirmed the
human immunodeficiency virus was the cause of AIDS.
Coovadia, who is professor in HIV/AIDS research at the University of
Natal-Durban, said today the international science community must ensure
that governments keep their commitment to ensuring universal access to
life-giving anti-retroviral drugs.
It was the Durban conference that opened the way for the rollout of ARV
therapy in poor and middle-income countries where today more than 3
million people are receiving treatment, said Dr. Julio Montaner,
president of the International AIDS Society.
He said those gains are threatened today by warnings that the global
financial crisis must affect supplies of ARVs.
Montaner said it was extraordinary that the United States is the only
member of the G8 conference of rich developing countries that has paid
up what it promised to fight AIDS.
"We must hold the G8 leaders accountable for their failure to deliver on
their promises," Montaner said.
"A retrenchment now would be catastrophic for the nearly 4 million
people who are already on treatment in resource-limited countries" and
some 7 million others waiting for treatment.
"AIDS is not in recession!" South African AIDS activist Vusikeya Dubula
said to cheers from the conference. "
Source: The Associated Press
|
