Leadership (Abuja)
Raliat Ahmed
6 August 2008
Researchers have been advised to scale up efforts in the search for vaccine against the dreaded HIVAIDS scourge.
Experts gave the advice at the 17th International AIDS conference in Mexico city which started on Monday and is expected to last for 4 days.
According to the experts, the result of HIV vaccine research have been unrelentingly negative in recent years and as a result of this, scientists should double up efforts to develop a vaccine as it is finally hitting home that while major progress has been made in treating HIV positive people, the same cannot be said of preventive efforts.
According to reports, out of the 50 HIV vaccine candidates that have been tested in humans, only two reached Phase III trials and both of those were found to be ineffective. About 30 vaccine candidates currently are on trial.
At the workshop, Executive Director of the global health programme at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Tadataka Yamada, said although HIV vaccine development was difficult, its benefits could be tremendous. "The challenges are huge, but I have no doubt that we will live in a world without HIV some day", Yamada said, adding that vaccine researchers need to be "unafraid to fail".
According to him funding and collaboration for vaccine research need to be increased to avoid wasted or duplicated efforts. "We need big investments for the future not only in the basic science of HIV prevention, but also in clinical trials for an HIV vaccine", Yamada said.
Executive director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, Alan Bernstein, added that researchers' objective should be to stop HIV and that the best way to do so is with a vaccine. Bernstein said a major challenge in vaccine research was unrealistic expectations from the public. "We need to get away from this home-run mentality to research", he said.
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