Address by Naledi Pandor MP, Minister of Science and Technology, at the South African HIV research meeting, Hotel Verde, Cape Town, 12 May 2015
Prof. Glenda Gray, CEO of the MRC,
Dr Olive Shisana, CEO of the HSRC
Dr Fareed Abdullah, CEO of the South African National AIDS Council,
Researchers;
Distinguished guests
Good morning, It's a pleasure to be with you today.
This meeting is convened by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the South African National AIDS Council (SANAC), the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC).
Our intention is to create a forum in which we seek your advice on what we should do to strengthen HIV research in South Africa and Africa. It may be useful to get your views as to whether we should consider a similar research summit for Africa in order to develop a shared agenda on African research on HIV.
In South Africa we have a roadmap for our work outlined in the National Strategic Plan (NSP) for HIV and AIDS, TB and STIs. It is a blueprint that guides our individual and collective response to these challenges. The plan also requires that we collaborate and talk with one another to ensure the best possible response to research on HIV TB and AIDS.
Our meeting today will focus on how our various research plans might contribute to South Africa's long term twenty-year vision (2010-2030) and its ambitious targets of "Zero new HIV infections, Zero new infections due to vertical transmission of HIV, Zero preventable deaths associated with HIV, and Zero discrimination associated with HIV".
These targets pose significant opportunities and challenges for researchers and other professionals. We require responses from the social sciences and also from those who work with popular culture including social media. HSRC research suggests a level of outreach and popular education that goes well beyond current or past campaigns. If you agree with this tentative view, how do we weave such research into current and future deliberations. What further work do we assign to the HSRC?
Our meeting will focus on HIV research not because we are downplaying the significant association with TB, but because we need to develop a set of programme responses that set an agenda derived from experience and lessons learnt from at least two decades of research. The recent results from some HIV clinical trials make it imperative for us to agree on a way forward.
CAPRISA 004 stands out as a significant project that was the first proof of concept that a microbicide could reduces women's risk of HIV infection. Three trials (FEM) PrEP, VOICE and FACTS found that tenofovir gel applied daily or intermittently by women did not reduce the risk of HIV infection. The results from the FACTS study found that there were no differences in HIV infection rates between those trial participants who were provided with tenofovir gel and those who received a placebo.
While the results were a setback, the completion of the trial itself was a significant milestone for us as a country. FACTS 001 has provided critical information about the safety and effectiveness of 1% tenofovir gel that will contribute to advancing HIV prevention research. It also demonstrated the ability of South African investigators to conduct large scale clinical trials that meet regulatory and Good Clinical Practice (GPC) requirements. I am confident that through FACTS we have been able to strengthen institutional collaboration and build capacity for health research that will enable us to conduct trials for other diseases in future.
Despite the disappointment with some of the HIV prevention trials, our commitment to invest in HIV research remains and we will be working with our partners globally to support efforts to develop new diagnostics, vaccines and other interventions that are important to stem the epidemic. Our unique position as a high-burden country, with a relatively well established scientific and technical infrastructure, places a particular onus on us to contribute significantly to global research efforts that are aimed at developing new tools for controlling HIV. We need to continue to develop our own scientific, clinical and manufacturing capacity so that we are not dependent on others to fulfil this function in the future.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are at a point where we need to act on important lessons from what’s happened in the HIV prevention field in the past - both the successes and the failures. We are also at a point where we must start to recognise the scientific challenges of HIV research for what they are, and draw up a strategic plan for the future. The need to develop a robust research agenda on everything from curative therapies to vaccines and other new prevention tools has never been greater.
We know that biomedical interventions alone are not going to end the epidemic. It's for this reason that we have invited key social scientists to help us develop a comprehensive HIV research agenda that incorporates both biomedical and social/behavioural interventions. The HIV research field is very complex and unless we tackle all these issues together, we will not be able to make progress.
I want to pay tribute to all of you for your relentless efforts, for prioritising the HIV research agenda in your work, for the advances you have made in research and for the work that you do with communities affected by this epidemic. I am hopeful that by the end of this meeting, you will provide us with a clear, forward looking analysis and plan of action for HIV research shaped by the lessons learned to date. I believe we have the best minds in this room this morning to guide us towards solutions to the HIV epidemic.
We're going to find find local solutions in South Africa to promote access to medicines.
We're going to build capacity for the manufacturing of antiretroviral drugs.
We're going to tackle the social and other factors that are responsible for stigmatising the HIV epidemic in our country.
I thank you and wish you every success in your deliberations.
