AVAC in the News

A tiny coffee shop table can barely contain Reid Rubsamen, whose restless energy nearly propels him out of his chair as he talks about the Immunity Project, his initiative to crowd-source money to make a new HIV vaccine.

An AIDS advocacy group says donors and researchers need to work smarter and faster to introduce prevention methods that people will actually use. AVAC says not enough has been done to capitalize on lessons learned from recent studies. AVAC Executive Director Mitchell Warren said that it’s time for a “reality check” in HIV prevention research.

Increased attention to the delivery of HIV prevention and treatment programmes is needed to prepare communities for a potential roll-out of a vaccine, which will most probably be partially-effective, experts say. “How to deliver a 31 percent effective vaccine - it’s hard stuff, it’s uncharted territory, and it’s un-costed territory,” Mitchell Warren, executive director of the New York-based NGO AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), told IRIN.

In November, 2010, the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of a three-year clinical trial, funded by the National Institutes of Health, announcing the arrival of a treatment that could reduce the risk of contracting H.I.V. by more than ninety per cent. But, in fact, adoption of the drug has been slow. According to Dawn Smith, a biomedical interventions implementation officer in the C.D.C.’s epidemiology branch, at least half a million Americans are good candidates for PrEP—meaning that they are at high risk for contracting H.I.V.