Scientists in the United States have tested a vaccine on monkeys that appears to be effective in preventing the equivalent of HIV. Research published in the journal Nature suggested that about half of the vaccinated monkeys were able to clear infection. The researchers have now created a form of vaccine that could be tested on humans.
It's hoped within the next two years. Rebecca Morella reports.
The researchers looked an aggressive form of Simian Immunodeficiency Virus that up to 100 times more deadly than HIV while infected monkeys usually die within two years, the scientists have developed the vaccine that can stop the virus from taking hold. After inoculating rhesus macaque monkeys, the US team then exposed them to SIV, they found that at first the infection began to establish and spread. But then the immune system spurred into action searching out and destroying all signs of the virus.
A group of 160 Somali religious scholars has issued a religious edict or fatwa against the Islamist group al-Shabab which controls much of the country. At a meeting on religious extremism held in the Somali capital Mogadishu, the scholars said al-Shabab had no place in Islam partly because of its use of violence. A BBC correspondent in the city says that it's the first senior religious figures have issued such a statement.
World News from the BBC
An aid worker for the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres in the Central African Republic says bodies still laid to the streets of the town of Bouca after fighting earlier this week. The aid worker told the BBC that hundreds of properties have been burnt down leaving many families without shelter.