Report Advises Planning Now for Global Access to a Future AIDS Vaccine

Even though an AIDS vaccine is years away, a report released yesterday by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) advised governments and international organizations to start thinking about how they would distribute one universally. "Access to AIDS vaccines is not tomorrow's problem," warned the IAVI report. "Waiting to address access issues until after AIDS vaccines are licensed will sentence millions to preventable illness and death." IAVI released the report at the UN conference on AIDS.

It is not unusual for new life-saving medicines and vaccines to reach the developing world years or decades after they are introduced in wealthier nations, said Dr. Seth Berkley, president and CEO of IAVI. To prevent similar delays in universal distribution of an AIDS vaccine, countries must act now. Berkley recommended the following:

• The UN global AIDS fund should include an account dedicated to the purchase and delivery of vaccines.
• Health officials should develop ways to direct vaccination campaigns targeting those groups at highest risk instead of concentrating solely on newborns and mothers.
• A tiered pricing system should be implemented to afford poor countries access without denying profits for manufacturers.
• Governments should support vaccine research and development.
• The approval process for vaccines should be streamlined.
• Drug manufacturers should be encouraged to increase their vaccine manufacturing capacity, even if public funds must be used to help build new facilities.

Getting an AIDS vaccine to the world's poor may be easier than providing cheap antiretroviral drugs because vaccination campaigns against smallpox, polio and other diseases have paved the way, according to Alf Lindbergh, an executive with French pharmaceutical company Aventis Pasteur, which is working on several vaccine candidates.

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