Andy Duffy
The government is mulling over an offer from one of the world’s leading Aids experts to set up a R40-million research unit in South Africa.
Dr Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who first isolated the HIV virus in 1983, tabled his offer in a meeting in Cape Town last week with the Department of Health’s Director General, Olive Shisana.
The government would have to contribute to the cost of building the unit – one of a string Montagnier is setting up to pursue new prevention and treatment approaches in world HIV hot-spots.
Montagnier, professor of virology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, was unavailable this week. Shisana refused to comment on his proposal.
But the Medical Research Council, also present at the meeting, says the department wants to check whether Montagnier’s offer fits into other government HIV initiatives before committing itself.
The council’s president, Walter Prozesky, says he expects the department’s response by the end of May.
Adds Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, chair of the council: “Everybody is exploring ways in which we can have a co-ordinated, coherent effort in fighting HIV.”
South Africa suffers the fastest-growing rate of HIV infection in the world, with an estimated 1 500 new infections every day. Montagnier’s research unit would look at strains of the virus peculiar to Africa and test vaccines appropriate to the region.
The unit would be one of several built or planned by the Paris-based World Foundation for Aids Research and Prevention, established by Montagnier in 1993. The foundation built a similar unit in Cote d’Ivoire last year, and others are planned for Thailand, Japan and the United States.
Prozesky says the South African centre would be managed by the Medical Research Council. The council, which reports to the Ministry of Health, funds HIV research at institutions across the country.
Prozesky says the new unit would strengthen research efforts, while attracting top international scientists. “Everybody knows we have to do more,” he adds.
He says Montagnier probably has another site lined up should the South African government rebuff him.
Montagnier toured South Africa 12 months ago, searching for a site. His three-day stay ending last Saturday was far more low- key.
But he was accompanied by two other high- ranking officials from the Paris foundation – fellow physician Alberto Beretta and the foundation’s business brain, Pier Luigi Vagliani. They spent much of their time with prospective private-sector donors in Gauteng.
They failed, however, to get a meeting with Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who chairs the interministerial Cabinet committee overseeing government HIV strategy, or President Nelson Mandela. Prozesky says both were too busy.