The East African
Monday December 21 2020
Summary
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Uganda has enrolled its first volunteer participants in a large trial to study whether two new vaccines offer protection against HIV.
The African-led PrEPVacc study will be testing two experimental combination vaccines on populations that are most at risk of getting infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to see whether the drugs provides any protection.
Ugandan scientists Wednesday launched the third phase of the HIV vaccine efficacy trials in the central district of Masaka, the Ministry of Health said.
The study is combining evaluation of experimental HIV vaccines and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) concurrently. PrEPVacc will test whether a new form of oral PrEP, TAF/FTC (Descovy) taken daily, is equivalent or more effective than TDF/FTC (Truvada) taken daily, in the context of the current PrEP availability situation at the five study sites in four countries: in Masaka, Uganda; Mbeya and Dar-es-Salaam,