HIV vaccine hope
week in which Zuma said Gordhan’s job was not in jeopardy and steps were being taken to address the tensions between him and Moyane “responsibly and amicably, for the benefit of all”.
“The shadowy campaigns must stop. If people have information that can be checked or confirmed, they must come forward with the facts,” Gordhan said.
He said he had graduated with a pharmacy degree in 1973 and worked as a trainee pharmacist in 1974. He worked as a qualified pharmacist at the King Edward VIII Hospital in Durban before being detained in solitary confinement for five-and-a-half months. He was then fired.
The Hawks and the Treasury are set to square off in Parliament even as their principals – Lieutenant- General Berning Ntlemeza and Gordhan – have daggers drawn.
Gordhan told Ntlemeza, through a letter from his lawyers this week, he would respond to a list of 27 questions sent to himwhen he was ready, not by Wednesday’s deadline, adding he would have to see how much of the information requested he would be able to supply.
He also questioned the legal status of the investigation, asking what offence was being investigated and what authority Ntlemeza had relied on in sending him the questions.
Only three of the 27 questions appear to be aimed at clarifying the possible commission of a criminal offence, involving, among other things, the alleged illegal bugging of National Prosecuting Authority offices.
The rest revolve around the his- tory and work of what was initially referred to at Sars as the National Research Group, who worked in it, how they were recruited, and how it was funded.
Since it would not constitute a criminal offence even if, as alleged, the unit conducted covert operations that are strictly the preserve of the intelligence agencies, it is not clear why the Hawks, whose mandate is to investigate crime, would want to know all of this.
Nhleko and Mahlobo would not say what crime was being investigated when they gave a briefing.
But the shoe will soon be on the other foot when the Treasury and Hawks meet before the police oversight committee in Parliament to discuss the latter’s budget.
The meeting arises from a series of court cases relating to the estab- lishment of the Hawks in place of the Scorpions, in which businessman Hugh Glenister contested the limited independence of the new unit.
He was later joined by the Helen Suzman Foundation and, in November 2014, the Constitutional Court, after having previously sent back the legislation establishing the Hawks for Parliament to “cure” its defects, opted to fix it itself when the new version still didn’t meet the standard for operational independence of the unit.
It deleted clauses that would have given the Minister of Police the authority to suspend or remove the Hawks head and renew his or her tenure.
But even before this judgment, the police oversight committee had recommended in a report on the SAPS budget that the Hawks should be a separate programme within the police, with a ring-fenced budget allocation.
The head of the Hawks should also present the unit’s budget independently, the committee said.
But the Treasury wrote to suspended police commissioner Riah Phiyega last year, arguing that the legislation, after the Constitutional Court judgment, did not require the Hawks to be a separate programme and the SAPS had not adequately motivated for this to be done.
Ntlemeza has been pushing for a separate budget since his appointment last year.
The issue was to have been addressed at a meeting on Wednesday, but Treasury director-general Lungisa Fuzile was unable to attend. A BREAKTHROUGH that could stop the spread of HIV/Aids is on the horizon with KwaZulu-Natal at the heart of the global fight to eradicate the deadly virus.
One of the biggest medical trials ever conducted is to begin later this year across 15 sites in South Africa. What the scientists will attempt to do is find out if they can use genes taken from the virus to make a vaccine that will cause the human body to create anti-bodies.
The trial will be similar to the Thai RV114 study in Thailand between 2003 and 2006 with more than 16 000 participants. The South African trial is expected to be bigger.
In Durban, the trial will be conducted at the Caprisa eThekwini Clinic, the HIV prevention units in Isipingo and Verulam, as well as Qhakaza Mbokodo Research Centre in Ladysmith.
The public is being invited to comment on, or object to, the study. It will start later this year, should it get the go-ahead, and a result is expected by 2018.
Professor Salim Abdool Karim, a world authority on HIV/Aids and director of the Centre for the Aids Programme of Research in South Africa, in Durban, said the Thai trial showed infections could be reduced by almost a third.
“This was the first time a trial found evidence that it was possible to reduce the risk of HIV infection with a vaccine. The data from this trial was analysed and Sanofi, the company which made the vaccine, has now teamed up with the National Institutes of Health, for the study to see if the same vaccine could work in a South African setting,” he said.
It is unclear how many volunteers would be injected.
“We will talk to patients coming to clinics and inform them about the study and invite them to participate. The people enrolled need to be normal and healthy and not have HIV. The vaccine will not work if people have HIV because the vaccine is to prevent it.”
Karim said there were no risks because the virus was modified and did not contain the HIV genes.
There will be two categories of participants – people who will receive the original modified vaccine and a second group who will be given a placebo.
“After two years we will compare the rate of HIV/Aids in those who were given the real vaccine compared with those with the placebo. Our goal is prevent at least half of the infections.”
Karim said once the vaccine was injected it released proteins which prompted the body to make antibodies. It was these antibodies that had the potential to stave off HIV.
Dr Wilmot James of the Africa Genome Project welcomed the trial saying it showed promising signs of preventing Aids.
“A vaccine will bring monumental relief to our overwhelming disease burden. We are getting closer but we are not quite there yet.
Clinical pharmacologist Professor Marc Blockman said the biggest risk was that that those who participated could have an allergic reaction to the vaccine.