Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - October 27, 2001
"If by helping to develop a vaccine I could spare somebody else that pain, then I want to be part of that," the 35-year-old Trinidadian said recently after receiving one in a series of test shots.
Improving the lives of those coping with HIV and AIDS will be the central focus of the 10th Annual International Conference for People Living with HIV/AIDS, which was to begin Saturday in Trinidad and Tobago.
Some 600 people from around the world who are infected with the virus will attend the five-day conference.
An estimated 36 million people in the world are infected with the HIV virus, which has already killed 16.5 million people, according to the Joint U.N. Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).
This year's conference was planned in the Caribbean to reach out to the region's large proportion of people infected with HIV virus, which causes AIDS, said Stuart Flavell, of the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, based in the Netherlands.
The Caribbean, with an HIV infection rate of nearly 2 percent, has the second-highest prevalence rate of HIV infection after sub-Saharan Africa. New treatments that arrest the progression of AIDS prove too costly for many in poor countries in both regions.
In June, researchers testing an experimental HIV vaccine began injecting the first of 40 volunteers in Trinidad in trials sponsored by the manufacturers and U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
The Medical Research Foundation of Trinidad and Tobago, which is conducting the trial, is working with other research centers carrying out similar "second-phase" vaccine trials in Brazil and Haiti. U.S. universities such as the University of Baltimore, Cornell University and Pittsburgh University have helped with the research.
The second-phase trials are designed to test effects on the immune system. A first phase tested the safety of the vaccine among 3,000 volunteers in the United States and Europe.
First- and second-phase trials of a similar vaccine combination have also been conducted in Thailand, the U.S. institute said.
Gonzalez, a Trinidadian volunteer, has received the first two in a series of six experimental injections without experiencing side effects.
The volunteers are receiving shots as part of a combination vaccine, including ALVAC manufactured by Aventis Pasteur of Lyon and AIDSVax made by VaxGen of San Francisco.
Participants at the conference are to discuss vaccines, access to medication, patient rights, prevention and discrimination.
"My hope is that this will shatter the conspiracy of silence in the Caribbean about the reality of HIV and AIDS," said Trinidadian Yolanda Simon, the conference's chairwoman.
The number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean has reached about 500,000, and the virus has killed about 8,000 in the region, according to the Caribbean Task Force on HIV/AIDS.
In Trinidad and Tobago alone, an estimated 17,000 people live with the virus, including 150 who will attend the conference.
"If we can reduce the stigma, we can reduce the discrimination," said Claudette Francis, of the Community Action Resource, a Trinidadian nonprofit group. "The authentic voices are not standing up to say: 'I have HIV, you've got to deal with me, talk to me, treat me like a person."'
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