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Mobilising support worldwide
On 18 May 1997, US President Bill Clinton challenged the US research community to find an effective vaccine within the next ten years and set this as a national goal. That year's summit of the G8 countries, held in Denver, also recognised the need for an HIV vaccine; subsequent G8 summits have reiterated this commitment. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting held in Durban, South Africa, in 1999, included a paragraph personally committing the leaders to advancing the response to HIV and AIDS including vaccine development. (For further information, see www.para55.org.)
Such commitments underpin the support for vaccine and microbicide development included in the final statement of the UN General Assembly Special Session on AIDS held in New York in June 2001.
Researchers in the United States, Australia, Britain, Cuba, France, Germany, Japan and South Africa among others have developed vaccine candidates. Clinical trials for HIV vaccines are ongoing or have taken place in the past in the United States, Thailand, various European countries including Britain, France and the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Cuba, Haiti, Kenya, Trinidad, Uganda. Other countries in which trials are planned, or are under serious discussion, some of them with vaccine research programmes, include Argentina, Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Honduras, India, Nigeria, Peru, Russia, South Africa and Tanzania.