A hopeful note penetrated the gloom and controversy at the International AIDS Conference in Durban yesterday. It was announced that the first AIDS vaccine cultivated to fight a strain of virus ravaging African communities, particularly in Kenya, had been cleared for testing on humans.
But the announcement, by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, was qualified by predictions that it would take at least a decade before it could be deployed globally against AIDS. The vaccine, the joint product of research teams from Oxford University and the University of Kenya, is the first to be specifically developed for Africa, the continent hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic. Known as a DNA vaccine, it is based on genetic material extracted from the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV), widely identified as the major cause of AIDS.
The development of a safe vaccine is generally believed to be indispensable to the campaign to eradicate the epidemic as Dr Malegapuru Makgoba, president of the South African Medical Research Council, observed at the start of the conference.
In the interim, powerful but expensive drugs are available. The London-based Panos Institute estimates it would cost $60 billion a year to treat the 12 million people in urgent need of those drugs world-wide, a cost way above the means of most of the poor countries where AIDS is concentrated.
But even if the price of drugs was reduced to come within range of the budgets of poor countries, that would not be sufficient. As Dr Wilbert Banneberg of Panos noted, effective use of the drugs requires regular laboratory tests and skilled personnel able to interpret the results, and that could cost as much as the drugs. American researchers said yesterday that cheap and widely-used antibiotics might help to contain the disease as an interim measure. Dr Kenneth Castro, of the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, said those antibiotics were cheaper and often easier to use and "offer enormous promise in reducing morbidity and morality associated with HIV-related disease".
President Thabo Mbeki found himself under attack again at the conference for his apparent refusal to acknowledge that AIDS is caused by HIV; and for his refusal to make an anti-retroviral drug known as AZT, which helps prevent mother-to-infant transmission of AIDS, available to pregnant South African women.
Foremost among his critics was US scientist Dr David Ho, renowned for demonstrating that a power cocktail of drugs can keep AIDS at bay.
Holding up a microscope photograph of an HIV virus attacking a cell, he pronounced: "This, ladies and gentlemen, is the cause of AIDS." He begged Mr Mbeki "not to let your legacy be defined by inaction on this human tragedy".
Mr Kenneth Roth, of Human Rights Watch, said Mr Mbeki's "job is not to orchestrate debate in a quiet college classroom. It is giving the best scientific information to the people in his country. He is failing miserably."
Reuters adds: Women's groups expressed anger that nobody had developed a way for them to protect themselves from AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Ms Lori Heise, of the Global Campaign for Women-Controlled Prevention Alternatives, said they were fed up with drug industry reluctance to work on an "invisible condom" or microbicide - a cream or gel that women or men could use to protect themselves.