"Uganda now boasts of a 50 percent decline in HIV/AIDS prevalence among women attending antenatal clinics; the Commissioner Health Services (Community Health) at the Ministry of health has said. Dr. Sam Okware said the HIV cases that were being recorded at various antenatal clinics over the last few years had drastically dropped from 30 percent to 6. he was opening a five-day workshop (29th October - 2nd Novermber; 2001) for African Scientists and Technicians at Uganda virus Research Institute (UVRI) in Entebbe. Okware told participants the epidemic's situation in Uganda was once so bad that it claimed ten of the twelve people with whom he started the first AIDS Control Programme at the ministry in the late 1980s. He however said although Uganda was recording a success story; it still had many HIV cases and more efforts were needed. ""Research and development are vital in whatever we do to enable us to walk and not crawl.; to enable us to run and not walk."" Okware said; adding that with all the progress in AIDS care and prevnetion; the ultimate soulution would be a vaccine. the World Health Organisation (WHO) country representative Dr. Walker Oladapo supported the idea of carrying out vaccine trials in Africa; since that was where the problem was biggest. He urged participants to take advantage of the technology; and put it into use in their laboratories for better solutions to the epidemic. The workshop drew participants from 11 African countries. These were trained in application of a detuned assay as a tool of estimating incident cases for future vaccine trials. The organiser of the workshop Dr. Pontiano Kaleebu of UVRI; told The Monitor the detuned assay is meant to differentiate between patients who were recently ifnected with HIV; from those who have lived with the virus for a long time. He said the tool; which is already applicable in the Western World; would help determine areas of high new incident cases and subsequently determine how the vaccine is taken."