The announcement came at an international meeting in Rome organized by the Italian parliament's Culture Commission.

Created under the U.N.-supported World Foundation for AIDS (news - web sites) Research and Prevention, the pediatric vaccine initiative will be administered in Africa, where each year about 600,000 newborns are infected with HIV by their mothers.

Mother-to-child transmission can occur during labor and delivery or through breastfeeding.

The "Families First Africa" post-exposure vaccine is the joint effort of Dr. Robert Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore; Dr. Luc Montagnier, president of the World Foundation for AIDS; and Dr. Vittorio Colizzi, of Rome's Tor Vergata University.

It is based on synthetic HIV peptides -- small proteins -- that will be incorporated into the BCG vaccine used to protect against tuberculosis.

Phase I of the study, to evaluate the vaccine's safety, should begin at the end of October in Baltimore and involve 30 healthy volunteers.

"By the first months of 2004 we should be able to start phase I clinical trials on newborns in the West African countries of Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ivory Coast. We hope to be able to report the first results by June 2004, " Colizzi told Reuters Health.

The Italian government has set aside $2 million to fund the program.