An AIDS cure

The body doesn’t make an adequate protective response against natural infection. So it’s difficult to get a vaccine that can do what natural infection can’t.But, what we are trying to do right now with a vaccine is trying to get parts of the HIV virus in a form that the body recognises it and makes a response better than the response that it would make against natural infection. We say that we have to do better than natural infection because this is very unique from the viruses that we have been dealing with.

So when do we get a HIV cure?

We don’t know. It’s impossible to predict when you don’t have a scientific answer. There is a lot of activity that is going on around the world but there are two major studies taking place in South Africa.One is using Clade C which is a predominant HIV sub type in Africa mostly among women and the other is the Imbokodo vaccine candidate  both being tested to see if they will be able to work. We started looking for a vaccine in 1987 all of which failed. It’s impossible to make a prediction because it’s a scientific unknown.

And it’s still costing the world billions of dollars trying to find. Why can’t researchers abandon it and put all your energy and money in innovations that have been proven to work?

We can do both because clearly even with the non-vaccine prevention methods we are not decreasing incidence dramatically even as science has given us the tools we need to change the course of the pandemic and ultimately end it. Any argument that this cannot be achieved because we do not have evidence-based tools is no longer valid. Science has given us the tools. They must all be applied because ending the pandemic is a multifaceted challenge, but we know it is possible. Yet it will not happen spontaneously. It will require a global commitment of countries, governments and communities to strengthen their health-care systems and build the capacity to provide both treatment and prevention.