Health ministers to encourage HIV/AIDS vaccine development

Published: 12-Nov-2004

Health ministers from seven EU countries have agreed to boost research cooperation to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine.


Health ministers from seven EU countries have agreed to boost research cooperation to develop an HIV/AIDS vaccine.

Meeting in Paris, the ministers from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands agreed to jointly organise studies and clinical trials to speed up discoveries and avoid duplicate testing.

French health minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said he wanted to move away from the situation where 90% of phase I trials and all phase II trials of AIDS vaccines have taken place in the US, despite more than 30% of candidate vaccines worldwide being produced by European researchers. Given the expense of testing vaccines (€40-120m each), co-ordinating resources was crucial, added director of the French national research agency for AIDS Professor Michel Kazatchkine.

  

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