World AIDS Vaccine Awareness Day: Raising awareness and hope for a vaccine against HIV/AIDS

Objective of World AIDS Vaccine Awareness Day:

• Raising awareness of the need to develop an effective vaccine against the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
• Educate the community about ways to prevent infection with this virus.
• HIV remains a significant global public health problem.
• The transmission of infection continues in all countries of the world.

AIDS has claimed the lives of 40 million people worldwide:

• In 2021, 650,000 people will die from HIV-related causes.
• People with AIDS are now able to live long lives thanks to treatment.
• Global strategies to end HIV by 2030.
• 95% of all people living with HIV need to be diagnosed.
• 95% of patients should take antiretroviral therapy.
• The need to suppress the viral load in 95% of the patients undergoing treatment.

Earlier this year, researchers announced the failure of the HIV vaccine, the only one that scientists were working on developing, at a late stage of trials, which constituted a major blow to efforts to control the disease. But hope for practical progress is always there.

Professor of Immunology and Fellow of the American Academy, Dr. Abdel-Hadi Mesbah, explains in an interview with Sabah, “Sky News Arabia”:

• The AIDS virus appeared nearly 44 years ago, and vaccine trials began in 1989, so it is not a new need.
• Vaccine trials have begun in India, Korea and the United States, but there have always been obstacles to producing such a safe and working vaccine without the virus being inside the body at all.
• The developments that took place during access to a vaccine against Covid 19 gave us great hope, because the two viruses are of the “RNE” type, which belongs to the group, like “C” and other viruses.
• The problem with AIDS is not in the development of technology, but in how the immune system deals with new mutations that occur.
• The current status of the vaccine is to inhibit the viral carrier only, and not to get rid of the virus itself.