"This is a setback but it does not detract from the issue that women still don't have the tools they need to protect themselves from HIV", Chatani added. "And African women, especially, urgently need more prevention options. So while we need concrete answers to why this happened as soon as possible, we must continue to research new options so women don't have to ask for permission to protect themselves".
Dr. Kim Dickson, an African physician who serves on the boards of both GCM and AMAG, noted that care and treatment of trial participants are among the top concerns of both groups, along with clinical trial ethics. "At civil society's insistence, the trial investigators forged written agreements in advance to assure that any women who sero-converted while enrolled in the trial would get ongoing care and treatment, including anti-retroviral drugs as needed", she said. "Our priority now is to make sure that advocates' and community questions about this trial and future research are heard and addressed as soon as possible."
Adding his perspective, Director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) Mitchell Warren observed that "Getting a negative result for one product certainly doesn't signal failure for the microbicide field or broader biomedical HIV prevention research effort as a whole. The nature of research is that the information gathered is cumulative", he continued. "Each trial result is a puzzle piece and, together, they make up the complex picture that will show us how to develop successful new HIV prevention tools."
Heise concluded by noting that "The real heroines and heroes in this are the people who enroll in clinical trials because they know how urgently new prevention tools are needed. In Benin, South Africa, and Uganda, th
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Contact: Lori Heise
lheise@path.org
202-454-5028
AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC)
31-Jan-2007