Positive Pondering on World AIDS Vaccine Day

May 18th, 2010 12:55 PM UTC
By ONE Partners

Here’s a partner post from our friends at IAVI in honor of World AIDS Vaccine Day:

Twenty years ago, as a resident of San Francisco, I watched the heart-wrenching effects of the AIDS epidemic on that city. I decided to study nursing and get involved in prevention efforts. Ultimately, the work led me to Africa, where for more than a decade, I advocated for extensive prevention education programs and access to treatment.

While living in Africa, I tested positive for HIV. Today, I am on antiretroviral treatment and doing very well, and I hope that one day every HIV-positive person in the world will have access to the treatment he or she needs. My diagnosis did not change my unwavering commitment to HIV prevention. But I moved to AIDS vaccine research when current prevention methods failed me. I simply don’t want others to go through what I have gone through. Nearly 7,400 people are infected with HIV every day. For every two people who start treatment, five more are newly infected.

Today is World AIDS Vaccine Day – 13 years to the day when former U.S. President Bill Clinton stated, “Only a truly effective, preventive HIV vaccine can limit and eventually eliminate the threat of AIDS.” Some of the world’s top scientists have been working for decades to design such a vaccine—but it was not until this past year that we knew it was a definite possibility.

Results from a vaccine trial in Thailand—a joint project of the Thai and U.S. governments—showed for the first time that it is possible to reduce the rate of HIV infection in humans through vaccination. Scientists at the organization I work for – the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) – were part of another major advance in the quest for a widely effective AIDS vaccine. They discovered two powerful new antibodies to HIV and also found the site on the virus to which they attach. This site provides researchers a promising new model for vaccine design.

These discoveries and the Thai trial results are thrilling—and I feel confident that we’ll be able to develop an AIDS vaccine. But what really drives me is the altruism that I came across during my 12 years in Africa and that I still hear today. I remember talking to a volunteer who had just found out that he was living with HIV. He had signed up for a study of early immunological markers in HIV infection, a project that could benefit vaccine development. When I asked him why he was doing this, he simply said, “I have seen too many people die, and this is all I can do. I want to be able to tell my children that I did something.”

If you would like to find out what you can do, visit IAVI’s website at www.iavi.org. I really appreciate the dedication of ONE members to fighting global poverty and disease, and I hope you will join us at IAVI in the effort to deliver a major blow to both by delivering an AIDS vaccine!

-Andrea von Lieven is a Clinical Program Manager at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). She is based in Berlin.

TAGS: From Our Partners, HIV/AIDS, IAVI