“It is impossible to say exactly how far we are, but one thing we can say is that over the last seven years we have made important strides in the direction of getting a vaccine”, he said, “but getting an HIV vaccine will probably be one of the most important and hard scientific challenges in all of HIV research”. As a result, governments and worldwide agencies will have scale up their efforts if they are to realise the goal of ending AIDS by 2030.
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The drug could help fight the HIV epidemic in Africa after meeting the criteria needed to prove its efficacy against the virus.
The study from the Global Burden of Disease collaborative network, published today in The Lancet HIV, found that 74 countries saw increases in age-standardized rates of new infections between 2005 and 2015, including Egypt, Pakistan, Kenya, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mexico, and Russian Federation.
The number of new infections decreased over the same time period in Rwanda, Somalia, and Uganda, according to the study. The ART coverage was 25.55 per cent in the region.
The three trials would represent three distinct approaches to an HIV vaccine – a testament to how challenging it has been to develop a vaccine against a virus that mutates so rapidly even within a single person that antibodies can’t keep up with the changes and against which no one has ever developed a natural immunity.
The two organisations receiving the PEPFAR grants are the HIV/AIDS Alliance and the Global Forum on MSM (men who have sex with men) & HIV.
Dr Kilonzo blamed the new infections on the country’s failure to test and counsel adolescents and inadequate knowledge about HIV/Aids. She described HIV as being “transmitted by sexism, racism and homophobia”.
The annual number of new infections peaked at 3.3 million per year in 1997. This was a reduction from the more than 88,000 recorded in 2013; as we make progress, the numbers are still unsustainably high.
Gates, meanwhile, warned that Africa is “chronically underprepared” for a demographic bulge in young people, who are most at risk for HIV.
“It’s time to face the truth about the unjust world we live in, the truth is we have every tool we need to prevent the spread of HIV… let’s ask ourselves why haven’t we beaten this epidemic”.
But prevention, as it stood now, was not good enough and research had to carry on‚ which was why his foundation budgeted so much money towards research and development.
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Professor Peter Piot, who is the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and was the founding executive director of UNAIDS, also remarked on the paper’s findings.
