In a clinic in Cape Town earlier this year, a woman rolled up her sleeve and became the first person enrolled in what is one of the most consequential HIV treatment trials ever attempted on African soil.
The researchers watching had spent the better part of a year wondering if this moment would ever come. Fourteen months earlier, the programme – known as BRILLIANT 011 and is the flagship of an Africa-led consortium of scientists researching a potential HIV vaccine – had been days from launch when a stop-work order arrived from Washington.
