Three Million Euros Needed for Anti-AIDS Vaccine. The vaccine developments will be made by the discoverer of the HIV virus - Prof. Vittorio Colizzi, his team and the Bulgarian experts

The discoverer of the HIV virus Prof. Vittorio Colizzi is ready to testify at the trial of the Bulgarian nurses in Libya

"Three million euros are needed for a possible invention of an anti-AIDS vaccine. The vaccine developments will be made by the discoverer of the HIV virus - Prof. Vittorio Colizzi, his team and the Bulgarian experts. The scientific work will be carried out in the laboratories of the National Center of Infectious and Parasitic Diseases (NCIPD)," Prof. Bogdan Petrunov, director of the NCIPD informed.

The agreement for joint work and cooperation between Italy, the NCIPD and Bulbil - the Bulgarian company, producer of the tuberculosis vaccine, which will be a constituent of the anti-AIDS vaccine, has already been signed.

"The money for the scientific research will come from the EU. We shall seek additional financing under UNESCO programs. The Bulgarian state will participate in the project as it will ensure laboratories and experts," Prof. Petrunov said further.

"All political and legal institutions are well aware that the problem with the Bulgarian nurses detained in Libya is due to the refusal of the Libyan state to cooperate in the case," Prof. Colizzi stated explicitly. "I am ready to testify at the trail," Prof. Colizzi declared.

^{_{Yuliana Uzanicheva, "StandartNews"}}

<sup>PROF. VITTORIO COLIZZI is one of the most eminent researchers of HIV/AIDS in Europe. He heads the Laboratory of Immunochemical and Molecular Pathology with the Biology Department of Tor Vergata University in Rome, Italy. Together with his French counterpart Prof. Luc Montagnier, in 2002 he begins working on a report about how and when nearly 400 Libyan children in the Benghazi chidlern's hospital came to be infected with the AIDS visrus. The final report drawn by the two scholars is submitted to the Libyan authorities, who have commissioned it, in April 2003. By the middle of 2003, Colizzi has visited Libya three times. He explores the modifications of HIV isolated from the organisms of Libyan children in three hospitals - in Rome, Geneva, and France. The general conclusion is that all modifications bear a close similarity and that they even have a common origin.

According to Colizzi, the AIDS infection in the Benghazi hospital is of an iatric character. Its source is a child who was a HIV carrier but was hospitalized for the treatment of another disease.</sup>