A senior official at an international HIV/AIDS symposium in
Beijing at the weekend said the government welcomes institutions
from all over the world to do research in the country toward a
vaccine.
Wang Yu, director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and
Prevention (China
CDC), told the New Approaches to HIV Infection Management
symposium that one potential vaccine has so far reached the human
trials stage in China and one other is applying to proceed with
them.
Though dozens of potential vaccines have been trialed in the
past years, attendees said it could take another four to five years
before they would know which might be developed into effective
vaccines.
Robert Gallo, director of the US-based Institute of Human
Virology and best known for his role in identifying HIV as the
cause of AIDS, said problems involved in testing a vaccine included
the virus' enormous variations and ability to mutate, and the way
it integrates its genes into host cells' upon infection.
He called on all human virology institutions throughout the
world to take on the task of developing possible HIV/AIDS
vaccines.
The symposium was organized jointly by the France-based
Fondation Mérieux, which aims to help prevent transmissible
diseases worldwide, China CDC and National Institute of Health, and
it began on Saturday and will run until tomorrow.
More than 150 domestic and overseas experts are attending it to
discuss preventive measures against the virus, which now infects
nearly 40 million people worldwide, including public education,
provision of clean injecting equipment and methadone
prescribing.
Hao Yang, vice director of the Health Ministry's Disease Control
Department, told China Daily that by the end of the year
128 stations should have been established to provide free methadone
to drug users to reduce transmission of HIV through sharing
injecting equipment.
Meanwhile, people should be encouraged to take HIV tests, blood
donors in particular, to prevent the spread of the virus through
blood transfusions, said Gallo.
In China, at least 23 percent of total reported cases of
HIV/AIDS involved infection from tainted blood in hospitals.
(China Daily December 5, 2005)