India launches human trial of Aids vaccine

"The trial is being conducted by a partnership between the government and Interational Aids Vaccine Initiative in Pune," Ramadoss told the Press Trust of India news agency.

The "investigational" vaccine was being tested on 30 volunteers in a first phase of the trial, Ramadoss said.

India has five million people infected with the HIV virus -- one in every eight of the 40 million infected worldwide -- and is second only to South Africa.

The quest for a vaccine is seen as particularly crucial in India where the World Bank has warned the disease could become the single largest cause of death in the nation of more than a billion people by 2033.