Africa: Experts call for more women and youth participation in AIDS vaccine trials

With women at least twice as likely to become infected with HIV as men when exposed to the virus that causes AIDS - and six times as vulnerable in parts of sub-Saharan Africa - HIV vaccine clinical trials must be geared towards meeting their needs, the United Nations health agency said. "In spite of the epidemiological reality, women and adolescents, especially girls, have often had minimal involvement in clinical trials of HIV vaccines, as compared to men. This is in spite of the fact that they would be major beneficiaries of a future HIV vaccine," said Saladin Osmanov, Acting Coordinator of the HIV Vaccine Initiative of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).