The 10th International Conference on STD / AIDS in Africa is currently taking place in Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire (7th - 11th December 1997). It is yet another high level attempt to hoodwink Global Africans into participating wholeheartedly in our own destruction.

The conference was addressed by the French president Chirac who called for more intensive research into developing an anti AIDS vaccine for Africa. And he did stress "for Africa".

The press statement issued by the organisers International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, (IAVI), follows the line that more needs to be done to find a vaccine to help these poor Africans dying of AIDS. But isn't it through vaccines administered by the World Health Organisation that AIDS first took root in Africa? And isn't it through inoculations and other medications that most of our children are becoming HIV positive?

It would appear that none of the African "leaders", "presidents" and other such puppets are asking the question "Why is AIDS more prevalent in Africa than anywhere else in the world, affecting six times as many women as men and the fastest growing sector of victims are children, since it is supposed to be a sexually transmitted disease?" Instead they stay silent or worse, like Museveni in Uganda and Bedie in Ivory Coast, collude with Global Europe in finding more ingenious ways of spreading the disease across Africa.

Because nobody wants this genocidal AIDS attack to continue out of control, nearly everyone is shouting for a vaccine. But a vaccine is exactly what the murderers want to give us filled with more deadlier poisons than AIDS.

If they really cared so much about us why do they kill African people who find not a symptom suppressant but a cure (see Global Africa Pocket News vol. 1 #2)?

Would anyone have believed me if I had told them that the US government were deliberately giving syphilis to African men and women and watching them die while pretending to treat them?

The following is a press statement issued by the organisers, the IAVI:

PRESS RELEASE

Note to Editors: This release is embargoed until 1900 GMT,
Tuesday, 9 December.

  HIV VACCINES DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS ‘MUST
                    INCREASE’

 African nations need to lobby for increased vaccine R&D

Abidjan, 9 December 1997 (via presspack.com) - Inadequate
funding and lack of political will is delaying the development
of HIV vaccines, warned experts meeting at the 7th
International Conference on STD/AIDS in Africa.

"Unfortunately, the world-wide effort for HIV vaccine
development has been low priority compared to that for drugs
and basic science. There has been relatively little effort
directed at the development of vaccines overall and almost
none targeted to vaccines appropriate for use in developing
countries" said Dr Seth Berkley, President of the International
AIDS Vaccine Initiative. "The pharmaceutical industry who is
the primary force behind the development of vaccines sees
many non-scientific obstacles to vaccine development and
without new incentives, the rapid development of a vaccine
for Africa remains a pipedream."

Researchers are increasingly confident that an HIV vaccine is
scientifically possible, but the development of HIV vaccine
candidates remains very slow. Over 25 candidate vaccines
have been developed and tested for safety in humans, but none
of them have gone into efficacy trials.

"New evidence from UNAIDS tells us that 7.4% of all those
aged between 15 and 49 years living in sub-Saharan Africa
are now infected with HIV, making it by far the most seriously
affected area of the world," said Dr Berkley. "The majority of
new infections are still occurring in African countries.

"The best solution to this terrible pandemic is a vaccine.
While prevention programmes have a vital role, they can only
hope to slow down the rate of spread of HIV. Only investment
in a successful vaccine - which must be usable, accessible and
affordable by African countries - will be capable of stopping
the HIV pandemic."

IAVI is calling for political pressure and funding to speed up
vaccine development. In addition, IAVI is asking donors to
work with African countries to create a plan to provide a
commercially viable market for HIV vaccines. This could be
done through grants or loans and would demonstrate to the
pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries that it would pay
to make a vaccine for Africa. "If we can show that there is a
world-wide market of $1 billion a year for a successful HIV
vaccine usable in lower-income countries, then there will be a
vital incentive for rapid vaccine development by the private
sector," he said. As they have the best technology, this is the
fastest way forward.

There was also a warning about the limited usefulness of the
new generation of anti-viral treatments for HIV. "The new
antiviral combination drug treatments do not work well for
everyone. Resistance is already a developing problem in
Europe and North America, and will become a problem
wherever these drugs are used," said Margaret Johnston, PhD,
Scientific Director of IAVI.

"Recent studies have also shown that these treatments have not
eliminated HIV from the body, which means that it is likely
that any person using these therapies will have to take them for
the rest of their lives. These issues, added to the cost of these
therapies and the non availability in most parts of Africa of the
sophisticated monitoring required for the effective use of these
drugs, means that these therapeutics cannot be counted on as a
way to end the epidemic. A preventive vaccine remains the
best hope for halting the spread of HIV."

IAVI, set up in 1996 with the help of the Rockefeller
Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, UNAIDS, Until
There’s A Cure Foundation, the World Bank, Fondation
Marcel Mérieux, and other organizations and individuals, is
dedicated to ensuring the development of safe, effective,
accessible, HIV preventive vaccines for use throughout the
world. IAVI particularly focuses on developing a vaccine
which would be usable in middle- and lower-income
countries, which are showing the most rapid increases in HIV
infection.

IAVI believes that targeted vaccine development funding could
cause a rapid increase in the number of HIV vaccines entering
efficacy trials - though this should not be at the cost of current
treatment and prevention programs. Without a perfect animal
model or clinical correlates of protection, it is only through a
process of testing vaccines that we will elucidate the most
promising approaches for future vaccine development. Moving
forward and testing the most promising candidates in the
pipeline now will either lead us to one of these candidates as
an effective vaccine or will give us the clues to develop one.

"If African countries can generate the political will to make
funds for vaccine development a priority, then an HIV vaccine
will be possible within the next decade. Without a push,
however, further delay is inevitable," Dr Berkley concluded.
"This is totally unacceptable for a disease which we now
believe infects 16,000 people worldwide every day."

                      [ENDS]

  Further information: Contact Dr Seth Berkley at IAVI on +1
212 655 0201, or e-mail <sberkley@iavi.org>. For
French-speaking journalists, contact Claire Olivier at
Interscience on +44 171 331 0331, or e-mail
<claire@interscience.co.uk>.

If you wish to receive IAVI Report, the first quarterly
publication devoted to HIV vaccine research, please send or
fax your name and address to Eileen Wilson at the address
below or e-mail at IAVI at <info@iavi.org>.