Africa could produce AIDS vaccine

An AIDS virus obtained from a patient in Kenya has been used to prepare a new potentially prophylactic vaccine against the AIDS menace, the Pan-African news agency (PANA) reported.

The project, called the international AIDS Vaccine Initiative, is a joint venture between the University of Nairobi in Kenya and Oxford University, England.

Dr. Omu Anzala, Kenya's leading virologist, says the fact that the initiative is spear headed by universities rather than pharmaceutical companies means the vaccine would be affordable to poor people in Africa if it proved viable.

"The vaccine so far produced by the project is intended as a prophylactic (protective) vaccine to be given to people who are not yet infected. The people already carrying the HIV virus are unlikely to benefit from it," he told BBC News Hour programme on AIDS Day, December 1.

The potential of vaccines to work prophylactically has been accentuated by findings in Kenya over a decade that a number of commercial sex workers had failed to succumb to the virus due to unexplained immunity factors in their bodies. The study of these sex workers by the University of Nairobi is headed by a Canadian, Dr. Frank Plummer.

The first safety study will be done "soon" in the United Kingdom where the vaccine has been produced, to be followed later next year by a trial in Kenya. He said the vaccine is being tested in England first to allay any potential charges that people in Africa were being used as guinea pigs.

Dr.Anzala says there 13 sub-types of the AIDS virus worldwide with strains A, C, and D common in Africa, while strain B is common in America and Europe.

In making the vaccine, at Oxford, the scientists were keen to use a strain of HIV virus that is common in Africa, which initially will be the main focus of the international AIDS Vaccine Initiative.