Nigeria & United States Collaborate On New HIV/AIDS Vaccine Technology

Nigeria and the United States are to collaborate in the provision of a new vaccine for the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, said while declaring open an international symposium on new prevention technologies for HIV/AIDS in Abuja yesterday that the collaboration would come through the US Department of Defense.

He said Nigeria's involvement was visible in the research for the new prevention initiative, which is a global enterprise, through collaborations among stakeholders and international institutions.

The minister who was represented by the Director of Public Health in the ministry, Dr. Mansur Kabir, stated: "Nigeria's national HIV vaccine development plan has been developed and recently modified under the guidance of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) and given mandate to a national working group to oversee the overall implementation of the vaccine plan."

An official of the US Defence Department, Robbie Nelson, who presented a report on the new trials for the vaccine against HIV/AIDS by the US military, observed that the partnership "will assist Nigeria design a framework that will be utilised in facing the challenges, prevention and possible treatment of the virus."

Nelson informed the gathering that though the new vaccine technologies had been tried in Thailand and Southern Africa, Nigeria stood a chance of developing a new model, despite the difficulties associated with the HIV version in the West African sub-region.

The Director General of NACA, Prof. John Idoko, while speaking to journalists, said the symposium was geared toward updating participants on current global, regional and national efforts on new HIV prevention technologies in the areas of research and development.

Earlier, Chairman of NACA board, Prof. Umaru Shehu, while making his opening remarks, maintained that HIV presented one of the biggest challenges in health care delivery, adding: "For us in Nigeria, HIV continues to impact on our development efforts and threatens our aspirations of attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015."

The Friends of AIDS Foundation is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for HIV positive individuals and empowering people to make healthy choices to prevent the spread of the HIV virus. To learn more about The Friends of AIDS Foundation, please visit: http://www.friendsofaids.org.

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