New antiretrovirals could save millions

Only about a third of the 9 million people who need treatment receive the life-saving drugs at present.

Paediatric specialist Dr Louise Kuhn said that antiretrovirals worked well to prevent infection among infants and she hoped that “antiretrovirals to prevent sexual infection among adults would be as effective”.

Venter said there were clear benefits to taking antiretrovirals when the CD4 count was higher “but the reality is we largely diagnose people when they are already very sick and most South Africans start with a very low CD4 count”.

Nevertheless, he said: “It is the most exciting new idea in prevention on the block. The questions are whether it will work, and increasingly it seems it could.”

Granich’s model was not the only prevention intervention making waves at the conference.

Yesterday, South Africa launched a clinical trial of the first South African-designed Aids vaccine, which will be tested at five sites locally and in the US.

The US arm of the trial has 12 participants while the South African arm plans to recruit 36 participants from two sites, one in Western Cape and another in Gauteng.

“If data from this clinical trial are promising, we intend to move into the next phase of trials, which will involve about 200 participants, and will look at further safety and immunogenicity data,” said Professor Glenda Gray, lead clinical investigator of the South African clinical trials team.