Preventive vaccines are among the most cost-effective public health interventions available. But it typically takes 15 years or longer for vaccines initially licensed in wealthy countries to reach people in developing countries. With HIV newly infecting 7,000 people every day, we must ensure that once an effective AIDS vaccine has been developed, it will be quickly accessible and easily distributed to people in developing countries, where 95% of new HIV infections occur.

This will require:

• Ensuring that vaccine procurement and distribution is sustainably financed
• Developing the human resources and social services required to appropriately disseminate and deliver the vaccine
• Addressing gender and human rights issues, including any stigma associated with receiving an AIDS vaccine
   

Ensuring that a future AIDS vaccine will be affordable and swiftly distributed requires working with manufacturers and regulatory authorities in recipient countries. For example:

• Any program for the swift dissemination of AIDS vaccines will need to balance the intellectual property (IP) rights of producers, who will feel compelled to recoup their research costs and profit from their invention, against the need for affordable vaccines
• Governmental regulatory systems for approving medicines are not geared to support rapid global access to novel vaccines. Because IAVI works closely with regulatory authorities in several countries to conduct multiple vaccine trials, it has already begun to lay the groundwork for the rapid approval of a future AIDS vaccine