JOHANNESBURG, Nov 5 (AFP) - South Africa has started its first AIDS vaccine trials this week to test the safety of the drugs and to measure the immune response they generate, a news report said Wednesday.
The first of 24 volunteers, including a Catholic priest, started the treatment at the Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in the township of Soweto south of the city, the Johannesburg-based newspaper The Star reported.
The trials are being conducted by the international HIV Vaccine Trials Network, which will carry out a similar study in the United States starting next July.
"The first phase is to assess the safety of the vaccine and measure the immune response it generates," the newspaper said.
The vaccine being tested is called the AlphaVax replicon Vector, which uses parts of a weakened strain of the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus and a gene from a South African strain of HIV to deliver the vaccine to the immune system.
As a control, not all vaccinations are real, the paper said.
"Later this week, more volunteers will receive the vaccine. Once the safety of the substance has been assured, the next phase, to broaden the immune response, will start."
One of the volunteers, Father Kieran Creagh of the Saint George's Catholic church in Pretoria, told the paper he decided to participate in the trial because he knew many HIV-positive people and has seen some of them die of AIDS.
"I don't want anyone else to live that way. I don't want any more young people to get infected," Creagh said.
South Africa has one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world, with five million adults in a population of 44.8 million infected.
The UN agency UNAIDS estimates that nearly 1,000 people died of AIDS each day in South Africa in 2001.
The South African government has been dragging its feet on making anti-AIDS drugs available at state hospitals, but announced in August that it would draw up a national treatment plan.
The plan is yet to be presented to cabinet.
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