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Scientists at the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED), Kolkata, India, who have been working on the AIDS vaccine say they are close to achieving a breakthrough. The vaccine has already been made and toxicological tests have been done on mice and the results are encouraging. This vaccine may be ready for human trails by 2004 which would be conducted in Pune India. According to Sekhar Chakrabarti, deputy director, NICED, Kolkata the success or failure of the vaccine is uncertain. Even in the US, scientists had once come up with a vaccine and conducted human trial but it did not work. But, like they say, even in failure, you learn a lot, the scientist said. Chakrabarti, who has been working on the vaccine since 1983, said the virus varies from country to country. The virus found in the US is different in nature from the one in India. The Indian virus is more akin to the one in Africa or China. This is why the vaccines will also be different, said Chakrabarti, who has worked with Robert C. Gallo, the American scientist who co-discovered that the HIV virus caused AIDS two decades ago. Scientists at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine are also optimistic. They say - If the human trial is successful, it will be a major achievement.
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| According to official reports, there are an estimated 1.5 lakh people in India afflicted with the deadly virus, and there are 930 full-blown AIDS cases. | ||||||
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