Cameroon government suspends trial of AIDS drug amid ethical concerns.

Clinical trials of an anti-AIDS drug being tested on sex workers by the US pharmaceutical company Gilead have been suspended after controversy over how the trials were being conducted. A statement by the Cameroon government refers to "dysfunctions that have been noted by the audit mission" and states that "certain corrective measures need to be taken by the research team", although it does not go into specific detail. The trial in question is of the ARV Tenofovir which is being tested as a possible pre-exposure prophylactic to prevent people becoming infected with HIV. The trial started in September 2004 with 400 HIV negative women sex workers, half of whom were given a daily pill of Tenofovir, the other half a placebo. At the end of the trial, all the women were due to be re-tested for HIV. AIDS activists in Cameroon and France allege that the volunteers taking part had not been sufficiently informed of the risks involved, had received insufficient counselling on safer sex, and were not guaranteed appropriate health care and drugs in the event that they became infected with HIV during the course of the trial, all of which are ethical standards that are applied in the US. Gilead had already been forced to stop a similar trial of Tenofovir in Cambodia after a similar ethics row, although trials with sex workers in Ghana and Nigeria and homosexual men in the US are continuing. (1)

(1.) Cameroon: government suspends trial of AIDS drug. IRIN PlusNews. 4 February 2005. At: <www. plusnews.org>.