In response to the little known "HIV Awareness Day" on May 18, the National Minority AIDS Council looks at a vaccine as the "best hope" for overcoming the pandemic.
While a vaccine is important in curtailing the suffering caused by the disease, it's always important to practice safe sex, have partners you can trust and limit the number of sexual partners to prevent contracting or spreading HIV/AIDS or any sexually transmitted infection. Injection drug users should never share needles.
From the National Minority AIDS Council:
"An HIV vaccine may be our best hope to ending the global AIDS pandemic. More than 25 million people have died of AIDS worldwide since 1981. Over one million of these deaths have occurred in the U.S., where HIV has disproportionately impacted often marginalized and vulnerable populations within communities of color since the epidemic began, including: women, transgendered women, injection drug users, men who have sex with men, among others. Indeed, the very future of communities of color – and African American and Latino communities in particular, which together account for nearly 70 percent of all new HIV infections reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) annually – could depend upon the discovery of a vaccine.

Though no major viral epidemic has ever been defeated without a vaccine, participation by people of color in HIV vaccine trials has been limited due to misconceptions about the research process. NMAC has been helping to educate communities about HIV vaccine research through its work as a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases HIV Vaccine Research Education Initiative (NHVREI) program partner, since 2008. The agency offers an HIV vaccine resource page, which features HIV vaccine awareness postcards and educational newsletters, as well as an HIV vaccine tutorial, an updated version of which is available through NMAC's online classroom, the Learning Management System."