Short Wave Could this vaccine trial mean a future without HIV?
19 snips
Feb 16, 2026 Ari Daniel, a freelance science reporter who covered an innovative Pan-Africa HIV vaccine trial, shares field reporting from South Africa and Zanzibar. He describes lab work with long-term blood samples. He recounts a funding freeze that threatened the trial and how researchers regrouped with new, smaller funding. He follows the launch of the scaled-back trial and community reactions in Cape Town.
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Decades Of Donated Samples
- Penny Moore describes a freezer room holding decades of samples from 117 South African women who donated blood for HIV research.
- Those samples have enabled deep study of how HIV evolves and informed work on other diseases like COVID-19.
Funding Halted In Zanzibar
- At a Zanzibar meeting, USAID funding froze after an executive order, stopping a $45 million HIV vaccine program just before it began.
- Penny Moore and colleagues received stop-work orders and watched months of planning collapse overnight.
Raise Backup Funding Quickly
- When large grants collapse, pursue diverse funding sources quickly and write emergency proposals.
- Penny's team secured smaller local and philanthropic grants to keep the trial alive, albeit scaled back.