HIV vaccines: should SA be focusing on alternatives? August 13, 2009
Posted by Linda in : SAJS , trackbackIn the wake of disappointing results from the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), and an equivalent trial which was halted in South Africa last year, Lynn Morris, from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases , and co-workers argue that there is still optimism for the development of a vaccine against HIV.
As the country with the most HIV infections in the world, South Africa has the greatest need for an HIV vaccine. Rather than cutting back on vaccine development, the country should double its efforts in a smart and innovative way. History shows that vaccination is still the most effective way to counter viral epidemics – smallpox, measles, hepatitis and other infections have either been eradicated or successfully controlled. The lessons learned from developing the polio vaccine are useful reminders that making a vaccine is no easy task, and that we still face many obstacles.
Read more: S. Afr. J. Sci. 105 (5/6), 168-169.
Comments»
Any discussion of HIV vaccines in SA HAS to address the fact that the Dept of Science and Technology killed a perfectly good programme that was well-rated by an international panel of scientific advisors – because they didn’t like the governance of the SA AIDS Vaccine Initiative.
Really: they took away the R10 million or so per year that was going into development of a vaccine pipeline, effectively stalling any development of anything not at the end of the pipe – and then put it into the SHARP programme run by the BRICs, which after about a year managed to fund ONE vaccine-related project, that was a start-up from scratch.
Net result: two vaccine candidates in clinical trial, NO further development of anything at an earlier stage, and now close to three years of development time lost. Oh, and a whole lot of well-trained and experienced scientists lost to any future programme through being made redundant.
Hell of a way to try to make vaccines, people.
Nice to see a facility for doing this, BTW!