Search for vaccine dominates AIDS conference

An air of optimism dominated the 11th International Conference on AIDS and STDs in Africa (ICASA) in Lusaka as experts expressed growing confidence in the prospect of an early HIV vaccine. Hopes were buoyed by the disclosure that production had started on the first HIV-vaccine to be developed in collaboration with African researchers, and that early clinical trials on human beings would begin in January in Britain. "Researchers from the University of Nairobi are working with vaccine scientists from Oxford University in the UK to produce a vaccine which targets the strain of HIV most prevalent in East Africa," Nick Gouedde of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) said. [See separate Item: irin-english-1614, titled 'Search for vaccine dominates international AIDS conference'] The Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund, Carol Bellamy, told the conference on Wednesday that sub-Saharan African countries needed a massive infusion of resources if they were to make any significant headway against HIV/AIDS. Bellamy called the pandemic "the world's most terrible undeclared war". She said: "Some 200,000 people, most of them children and women, died in 1998 as a result of armed conflict on the African continent, and yet two million Africans were killed by AIDS in that same year." "Poor countries need more than encouragement," in the fight against HIV/AIDS, she said. "They need income support, debt relief and strong social safety nets. Most of all, they need resources." Bellamy called on the international community to "eliminate the staggering inequities and inequalities that are contributing to the spread of the pandemic - along with many other consequences of global poverty."