Associated Press

Beijing, March 13:

China has begun conducting the first stage of testing of a new AIDS vaccine on eight volunteers, the government said. The testing began yesterday, when the volunteers received physical checkups and signed waivers, the official Xinhua News Agency said. A total of 49 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 50 will be part of the tests, to take place in three stages, said Xinhua, citing Chen Jie, director of the disease control agency in southern China’s Guangxi region. The first stage of testing will last 14 months, Xinhua said. It didn’t say what the stage was meant to test, but said the second would cover the “immune nature and safety of the vaccine.” The agency didn’t give any other details of the tests. Chinese drug regulators approved the tests last November.

At that time, state media said the vaccine, already tested on monkeys, was developed by Chinese scientists who have studied the genetics of the AIDS virus since 1996. China says it has 840,000 people infected with the AIDS virus and 80,000 with the full-blown disease. But health experts say the true figures are much higher and warn that China could have 10 million people infected by 2010 unless it takes urgent action. After years of denying that the disease was a problem, the communist government has become more open about its AIDS epidemic, though activists are still regularly detained and harassed. In the world’s biggest study of an experimental AIDS vaccine, Thai and US researchers have been testing a combination of two drugs on 16,000 Thai volunteers since 2003.