An American pharmaceutical company has said that it may be able to produce a vaccine against AIDS within five years, and not ten as previously thought.
The company, VaxGen, is due to announce the findings of its research this afternoon at an international AIDS conference in Barcelona.
In another development, the Swiss firm, Roche, in partnership with an American company, said that they have produced a drug that attacks the HIV virus before it gets into human cells, not after. That drug could be available next year.
But Seth Barclay, President of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which promotes research into the illness, said that it would be some time before the treatment was readily obtainable.
There have been calls at the 14th International AIDS Conference for the disease to be put at the top of political agendas around the world.
The head of the United Nations agency set up to combat AIDS, Dr Peter Piot, earlier said that leaders who did not take the fight against the disease seriously should be put out of office.
