UGANDA will on Monday begin the first HIV vaccine trials in Africa, the state-owned Sunday Vision newspaper reports. Ugandan health director general Kihumoro Apuuli said that 40 low-risk volunteers aged between 18 and 40 will be involved in the first two-year phase of the study. The volunteers will be used to test the efficacy of the vCP205 vaccine, manunfactured by the French firm Pasteur Merieux Connaught. The vaccine, which has reportedly been tested on 800 people in the United States and France, is made of a weakened canarypox virus with three HIV genes and is reported to be incapable of multiplying within its human carrier, according to Apuuli. The vaccine is based on the B type HIV virus, which is prevalent in Europe and America, rather than on the A and D type most common in Uganda.