Good News of the Day: Doctors Very Hopeful About This HIV Vaccine

If it often feels like that the bad guys won and the Empire’s strike back was the final one, keep in mind that good things still happen on our little blue marble.

Case in point: This HIV vaccine, which will be released on Wednesday, could be the “final nail n the coffin” for the virus. Set to enroll over 5,000 sexually active men and women between the ages of 18 and 35, the study will be the “largest and most advanced HIV clinical trial to take place in South Africa, where more than 1,000 people a day are infected with HIV,” according to TIME.

Doctors are very optimistic about the effectiveness of this vaccine, which was found to be 31.2 perfect effective at preventing the virus.

“If deployed alongside our current armory of proven HIV prevention tools, a safe and effective vaccine could be the final nail in the coffin for HIV,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

“If an HIV vaccine were found to work in South Africa, it could dramatically alter the course of the pandemic,” said Glenda Gray, South African Medical Research Council CEO.

TIME reports the success of South Africa’s treatment program:

South Africa has more than 6.8 million people living with HIV, but the country has had remarkable success in rolling out an HIV drug treatment program, which the government says is the largest in the world.

Life expectancy, which sank as the epidemic grew, has rebounded from 57.1 years in 2009 to 62.9 years in 2014.

Even in a world overrun by bad news, people are still doing good work.