“We should be in the driver’s seat, not sitting in the back of the
car waiting for someone to find the answer,” Jani told IRIN/PlusNews.
“We need to get involved and take leadership to find the solutions.”
“Maybe we don’t yet have the capacity to develop these products in
the lab, but we have the capacity to test them and accelerate
discovery,” he added.
Larger HIV vaccines trials in the pipeline
The centre – which is located on the outskirts of the capital city,
Maputo – aims to help the National Institute of Health understand the
health concerns of the country’s increasingly peri-urban population.
“Maybe half of Mozambique will be living in peri-urban areas in the
next 10 years,” Jani said. “It’s a setting where we don’t completely
understand the determinants of health.”
Understanding these determinants will require household mapping and
an HIV prevalence study. Researchers at the centre expect that this
study will show an HIV prevalence rate of at least three percent in the
local community.
If this is true, Polana Cancio could become a clinical research site
for larger, more advanced HIV vaccine trials. Nationally, Mozambique
has an HIV prevalence rate of about 11 percent, according to UNAIDS.
The centre will also be conducting a study into common causes of fever.
Jani added that, while it might not be possible for the all the
products tested by the centre to enter the market patent-free, he hopes
that products tested at the centre – and found to be effective – will be
affordable for use in countries like Mozambique.
llg/kn/rz
– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.
http://gantdaily.com/2013/03/15/mozambiques-first-hiv-vaccine-trial-heralds-new-era-in-local-research/
