Inter Press Service - November 23, 1999
Lewis Machipisa

Numerous programmes to curb its spread have been initiated, but sexual behaviours have hardly changed, prompting health officials to intensify efforts to come up with a vaccine.

While traditional prevention measures -- like the use of condoms -- can play a role in slowing the disease, it is now clear that the best hope for ending the epidemic and the global development catastrophe it is spawning, is a universally accessible, preventive vaccine.

Health officials say vaccines are the most cost-effective technologies known in health care.

According to Victor Zonana of the New York-based International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), "a vaccine is the world's best hope of reducing the disease."

"Prevention and treatment programmes can slow the AIDS epidemic, but only one strategy, an effective vaccine against HIV, can stop it," says Zonana, who is IAVI's vice president for public affairs.

Development of a vaccine is expensive, and most vaccines take years to reach developing nations, if they are marketed there at all.

The anti-retroviral drug, AZT and Nevirapine -- which cuts HIV transmission from mother-to-child by up to 85 percent -- costs between 10,000 and 15,000 US Dollars per year, far beyond the reach of most developing countries that have the highest incidence of HIV infections.

According to IAVI, even if pharmaceutical companies made their anti-HIV products available for free, most developing countries do not posses the laboratories, health care, transport or support systems to provide ongoing HIV treatment.

Costs of prevention programmes, too, are beyond reach for many. In some poor countries, total per capita health expenditures is less than the cost of a dozen condoms, or a single HIV test, in an industrialised nation.

IAVI is an international scientific, non-profit organisation that is forging the global cooperation to develop a "safe, effective, accessible, preventive AIDS vaccine for use throughout the world.

Recognising the need to finding a solution to the escalating crisis, Commonwealth Health Ministries this month called for "the declaration of the Global State of Emergence on HIV/AIDS" and asked their governments "to urge for commitment to developing an effective vaccine, in the light of the impending disaster facing many countries".

A number of governments have made commitments to accelerate AIDS vaccine development. The South Africa government, for example, has doubled its commitment to the South African AIDS Vaccine Initiative, bringing to 25 million Rand the resources available to the project.

One US Dollar is equal to 6.1 Rand.

Uganda is hosting Phase 1 Safety Trial of an AIDS vaccine in Africa. "Sustained behaviour change has proven difficult even for the most well-funded and well-educated populations," says IAVI. "No programme has been found that can uproot the stigma attached to the behaviours that spread HIV or the prejudice against those who have become infected."

"In the industrialised nations where drugs are more readily available, we are beginning to see an alarming increase in the rate of resistance to drugs," says IAVI.

For the first time ever, a major industrialised country has committed itself to AIDS vaccine development. Last week the British government gave 22.7 million pounds for AIDS vaccine development. 14 million pounds will go to the IAVI as part of a broader HIV Prevention initiate in Africa.

One Pound is equal to 1.62 US Dollars.

IAVI will use the funds to develop AIDS vaccines for developing countries, using local strains of the virus. 7.5 million pounds will be spent over five years to assist a regional response to HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa.

The funding will back a Task Force which is being established to improve the response to HIV/AIDS and target those people at greatest risk from the epidemic. Support will initially be focused on Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland. The money will also go toward the training of more than 700 volunteers from the UK Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) organisation, to raise awareness of the HIV epidemic in Southern Africa.

"Until there is an affordable vaccine or cure, the most effective way to arrest the HIV epidemic is to reduce risky behaviour that may lead to infection and spread of HIV," says Clare Short, British Secretary of State for International Development.

More than 47.3 million people, including 34 million in Sub- Saharan Africa, have contracted the disease globally.(END/IPS/lm/mn/99)
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