Africa: Daily HIV/Aids Report

Obama's Campaign Discusses Candidate's Plans for Addressing HIV/AIDS in U.S.

[Oct 20, 2008]

Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.) campaign on Thursday during a conference call discussed the candidate's plans to combat HIV/AIDS in the U.S., the Advocate reports. According to the Advocate, Obama's plans include increasing funding for research, care and prevention and developing a national strategy within the first year of his administration.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) during the conference call said that Obama's health care plan requires insurance companies to cover everyone regardless of health histories or pre-existing conditions, which is "critical to the HIV/AIDS community," she said. "One of the most important differences is going to be leadership on public health issues that are facing America, in particular the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic," DeGette said.

Sandra Thurman, former director of the Office of National AIDS Policy under former President Clinton, said she "can't imagine anything more important than having a national AIDS strategy, the likes of which we have never had in the history of the epidemic for over a quarter of a century." She also noted that the Ryan White Program has been underfunded. She said, "We have an epidemic in the United States, which in many ways has not slowed down. We haven't had an increase in support and funding that's commensurate with the challenges that we're facing in communities that already have serious issues to deal with."

According to the Advocate, Obama's campaign has pledged to increase funding for the Ryan White Program, although they did not provide specific amounts. Neera Tanden, domestic policy director for Obama's campaign, said, "We want to make sure we work with Congress to come up with the right number as we go forward." She added that increased spending on a national level would help limit urban and rural areas competing for Ryan White funding. "We don't need to have this divisive strategy of pitting one area against another," she said, adding, "We should add additional funding." DeGette said that Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) has suggested enacting a "spending freeze" that could affect programs like Ryan White. "If you cut the Ryan White [Program,] you'd be cutting from a program that's already underfunded," DeGette said.

During the conference call, campaign representatives also emphasized that rather than focus on abstinence-only approaches to HIV/AIDS prevention, Obama would use a "science-based" approach to prevention. DeGette said, "With all of the billions of dollars that have been given to HIV/AIDS prevention around the world" under the Bush administration, most of that money has been given to, in the past, religious organizations that will not give condoms out. Now that just isn't going to work" (Eleveld, Advocate, 10/17).

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Science & Medicine

Researchers at HIV/AIDS Vaccine Conference Discuss New Methods, Ongoing Trials

[Oct 20, 2008]

Researchers at the AIDS Vaccine 2008 conference in Cape Town, South Africa, last week examined how setbacks in developing a vaccine have "forced them to look for entirely new ways of creating a defense against the disease," AFP/Google.com reports. "We are in the middle of quite a profound shift of mindset in the research community," Alan Bernstein, director of the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, said at the conference, which ended on Friday. He added that setbacks have made researchers examine new research methods in the effort to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine (Blandy, AFP/Google.com, 10/18).

Merck in September 2007 announced it had halted a large-scale clinical trial of its experimental HIV vaccine after the drug failed to prevent HIV infection in participants or prove effective in delaying the virus' progression to AIDS. The vaccine candidate also might have put some trial participants at an increased risk of HIV. Following news of the Merck vaccine, trials of NIH's Vaccine Research Center's HIV vaccine candidate were scaled back (, 10/16).

"The Merck result was such a surprise, and everyone was kind of shocked off their horses," Mitchell Warren of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition said, adding, "What happened, no one could have predicted. They still don't understand exactly what happened. That finding forces people to realign and look at new ways and new approaches to how we are going to find an AIDS vaccine because it was so surprising." According to Warren, the results of the Merck trial have made researchers rethink assumptions about how vaccines work. "People are really grappling with new ways of doing things," he said.

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