Last week, after the withdrawal $88-million HIV vaccine project by the Public Health Agency of Canada, Peterborough, Winnipeg-based International Centre for Infectious Diseases, Laval University in Quebec City and the University of Western Ontario, which initially were planning to build a manufacturing facility, are no more doing so. This decision was seen posted on the website on Friday.

Questioning the report that resulted in this unexpected decision by the Federal Government, Jeremy Carver, CEO of International Consortium on Anti-Virals (ICAV) said, "All in all, it's a strange situation to put out a call and then two years later do a study showing that you didn't need to put out the call in the first place. How well it's been done".

This facility was basically intended to direct to formation of a secure, reasonable, reachable and efficient HIV vaccine as a part of Canadian HIV Vaccine Initiative, which in turn was a joint effort of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation along with the federal Government.

This decision came following conclusions by Gates Foundation study indicating that there is no requirement of pilot scale facility because in order to reach the amount needed by the research, of adequate production exists in North America and Europe.

Declaring that none of the four bids were appropriate for the criterion of the facility, Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro said, "We think we've got a better way to move forward to help people because that's what it's all about, helping people affected with AIDS in Africa".