Key HIV vaccine trial in South Africa ends because of poor results

Decision described as a 'significant setback' by International Aids Society

The latest trial of a vaccine against HIV has been halted because interim results show it is not working, the National Institutes of Health in the United States has announced.

The end of the trial taking place in South Africa is a blow to the vaccine field and to Aids experts and advocates. As early as the mid-1980s, the US government was forecasting that Aids would be stopped by a vaccine. In 1997, the then-president Bill Clinton pledged money to an effort to find a vaccine within 10 years. But as the decades have passed, no effective vaccine has been discovered.