A vaccine against HIV will be trialed in South Africa later this year after meeting the criteria needed to prove it could help fight the epidemic in Africa, a UN-cosponsored international conference on AIDS in Durban this week decided. The vaccine stems from a landmark trial in Thailand in 2009 that showed 31% protection against the virus. It was improved for use in the higher-risk populations of sub-Saharan Africa, where a different subtype of the virus also exists. A larger-scale trial of the vaccine will begin in 5,400 people across four sites in South Africa in November 2016 and run for three years, CNN reports. Experts have long been awaiting a vaccine showing enough efficacy to dent the numbers of people newly infected with HIV each year. An estimated 0.8% of adults aged 15–49 worldwide are living with HIV. In 2015, 2.1 million new infections were reported, two-thirds of which occurred in sub-Saharan Africa.
