Aids vaccine 'no magic cure'
2009-07-22 11:02
Cape Town - An Aids vaccine may not be the panacea for the lethal pandemic the world so desperately wants, activists have warned following South Africa's first Aids vaccine clinical trials.
"This does not mean that the research agenda should not be pursued," Paula Akugizibwe from the Aids and Rights Alliance for Southern Africa (Arasa) told News24. "But we should not let efforts to find a magic bullet distract us from the immediate need to save lives.
Medical Research Council president Anthony Mbewu said the first vaccine to be developed and designed in South Africa was a "giant leap" for science and technology in the country, when clinical trials were launched on Monday.
But Akugizibwe cautioned: "The world is jumping into a flurry of excitement about a possible solution many years down the line - nobody seems to be in a similar flurry about the fact that, right now, two out of three people who need ART to stay alive aren't receiving it."
A decade and R250m
The trials will be conducted by the South African Aids Vaccine Initiative (SAAVI) on 36 healthy volunteers in Crossroads and Soweto.
South Africa has spent R250m and nearly a decade developing the vaccine, in partnership with the USA.
But while Anthony Fauci, director of America's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the vaccine's launch in SA was "a very important event", the leading scientist has previously expressed caution about a viable vaccine.
"HIV infection has never provided scientists with a proof of concept of predictable protection, which historically has been the guiding principle for successful vaccine development," he said in a March article on MSNBC.
Fauci noted that a vaccine's success relied on the body's ability to fight the disease on its own.
But he said: "Not a single individual is known to have spontaneously eradicated the virus following documented, established infection."
Both developing and developed nations worldwide have poured funding into the search for a vaccine, as more than 60 million have been infected with the virus since the beginning of the pandemic. South Africa is home to the highest number of people living with the disease.
Denial and neglect
Years of denial and neglect have led to about 5.2 million South Africans living with HIV in 2008.
But health authorities now are pushing for a solution, with hopes pinned on the vaccine.
However, Fauci has warned that an HIV vaccine alone may never fully prevent HIV infection the way smallpox or polio vaccines can. "Our efforts in HIV vaccinology must be part of a broader approach toward HIV prevention," he said.
Already proven methods such as HIV testing and counselling and antiretroviral drugs are under threat from cutbacks in funding due to the recession.
Akugizibwe said: "People are being turned away from receiving life-saving services because there are no resources to fund this."
The irony for Akugizibwe is that we already have the comprehensive solution the world is hankering after.
"A mathematical model showed that theoretically if we had universal testing and treatment we could eliminate HIV using ARVs," she told News24.
Children are still being born with HIV when the tools to prevent this are available. Yet only 18% of women in sub-Saharan Africa get HIV testing during pregnancy and less than half take the required medication.
Faulty distribution
Even if a vaccine was developed, a faulty system distribution system would need to be completely overhauled. Currently about 50% of African children don't get the standard immunisations they need for preventable diseases like measles and mumps.
"Innovation is important, it brings advances and it improves situations," said Akugizibwe. "But before innovation we need renovation."
South Africa was the site of the biggest setback to Aids vaccine research, when the most promising vaccine ever - produced by Merck & Co. and tested here in 2007 - found that people who got the vaccine were more likely to contract HIV than those who did not, AP reported.