"The government has so far allocated over 1 billion rubles ($42.7 million) for [vaccine development]," Rospotrebnadzor's Alexander Goliusov said during a RIA Novosti TV link between Moscow and New Delhi to discuss the fight against AIDS. "We have vaccine candidates, but there is still a lot of work to do. We could expect a vaccine within the next 10 to 15 years."
The expert said three research centers in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Novosibirsk had been incorporated into a vaccine development team, and a group of HIV-positive patients in St. Petersburg had already been selected for tests.
Marina Shevyreva, deputy head of the human wellbeing, science and research at Russia's Health and Social Development Ministry, said the timeframes forecast by the ministry coincided with the Rospotrebnadzor prediction.
Dr. B.S. Banerji from the Indian Health Ministry's department for the fight against AIDS said Indian scientists could also develop a vaccine within a similar span of 10 to 15 years.
Last November, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) estimated there were 1 million HIV-positive people in Russia. The country's chief doctor, Gennady Onishchenko, said however that 403,000 HIV cases had been registered in Russia since 1987, when the first HIV case was reported in Russia.
By the end of 2005, 40.3 million people were HIV-positive worldwide, including 17.5 million women and 2.3 million children under the age of 15.
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