“Kenya: AIDS Vaccine Research Is Encouraging”

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During a tour for journalists of the HIV/AIDS vaccine development laboratories at Nairobi University Medical School in Kenya, Kenya AIDS Vaccine Initiative (KAVI) project manager Dr. Omu Anzala told the reporters that an HIV vaccine developed by the group has not shown any signs of being dangerous to humans in early clinical trials. Anzala said that the vaccine has already been through animal testing, and that the Phase I clinical trial began in Nairobi in February 2001, involving 18 HIV-negative volunteers who have little risk of infection with the disease. The trial was designed to understand the vaccine's safety profile and its effects on healthy people, not to determine whether it is effective in preventing or battling HIV in the body. Anzala said that a new trial, slated to begin next year with 300 patients, will test the vaccine's effectiveness against HIV subtype A, the most common subtype found in Kenya.

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