Joint HIV vaccine initiative with Sweden announced

HIV vaccine trials to be conducted in Sweden next month are expected to be extended to Tanzania in 2005. The vaccine, developed under the HIV Vaccine Immunogenicity Study, a European Union-funded partnership between the East African country and Sweden, is based on isolating a safe constituent of HIV DNA and injecting it into volunteers, who later receive an immunity-boosting shot. Mohammed Bakari, a senior member of the research team, told Reuters the DNA-MVA vaccine was intended to target HIV sub-types prevalent in Tanzania, where an estimated 2.2 million of the country's 34 million people are living with HIV/AIDS.