Science may have provided a breakthrough on women’s health:
South Africa is considering rolling out use of a vaginal gel which can protect women against HIV during sex before it is officially licensed by drug regulators, the country’s health minister said on Tuesday.
Speaking at an international AIDS conference in Vienna, Aaron Motsoaledi said the need was so great for effective HIV prevention measures in his country — where 1,000 people die from AIDS-related illnesses each day — that his ministry was keen to act on early evidence of the gel’s success.
“We are very interested in it. We believe in an evidence-based approach and if scientists say this thing is going to work, then we will definitely be looking at it,” Motsoaledi told Reuters when asked if his government was planning to move ahead with the gel before it is licensed.
“So far, evidence is showing that it is … very promising.”
Researchers said on Monday that the gel, which is known as a microbicide and contains a prescription drug from U.S. drugmaker Gilead Sciences, can sharply reduce HIV infections in women who use it before and after sex.
The findings caused great excitement among the 20,000 scientists, activists and HIV positive people gathered for a biennial international conference on AIDS in Vienna.
They still need to assess the safety issues but with so many women dying each day from complications of HIV there is a lot of pressure to race the gel out to the market.
Results of the South African trial, which involved 889 women, showed the gel reduced HIV infections in women by 39 percent over two and a half years — the first time such an approach has protected against sexual transmission of the virus.
Researchers are already working on another trial larger which will involve 5,000 women in South Africa, Malawi, Uganda and Zimbabwe, to further test the gel’s safety and efficacy.
Hopefully, the trials will not demonstrate any significant side effects and this will be a medical breakthrough that can save hundreds of thousands of lives.
