Entebbe — UGANDA is scheduled to host tuberculosis vaccine trials in a collaboration involving the International Aids Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), Uganda Virus Research Institute and the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation.

IAVI Clinical Trials Monitor Apollo Balyegisawa said the trial will initially target 40 volunteers. "If all goes well, we shall have this trial running in the near future. We intend to have phase I and II trials. We are at the negotiations stage but once we are done, it will be known when the trials will exactly start," he told participants at a media training organised by the Africa Aids Vaccine Initiative in Entebbe on Friday.

Mr Balyegisawa's announcement is in line with Aeras President Jerald C. Sadoff's disclosure last December that clinical trials of several candidate drugs were expected to begin within a year. "We are working with the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership and scientific partners in Cambodia, India, Kenya and Uganda to develop additional clinical trial sites," Mr Sadoff said in a December 3, 2007 communication.

He said Aeras aims to have a new TB vaccine available with in seven to nine years. The foundation has, together with its partners, developed "a pipeline of six promising" vaccine candidates that are in or near early stage clinical trials in Africa, Asia, Europe and the US.

Despite being one of the most widely used vaccines in the world, today's TB vaccine -BCG - has had little apparent impact on the global TB pandemic, leading to the need for a new vaccine.

According to globalhealthfacts.org, over 160,000 Ugandans were living with TB as at the end of end of 2006.