LAS GUARANAS, Dominican Republic (AP):

Leaving her tin-roofed brothel for the day, the 42-year-old prostitute journeys to the capital for an injection that might save not only her life, but possibly millions more around the world.

Jacinta Julia Adams Fernández, a mother of three, is one of 175 Dominican prostitutes lending their bodies to a trial of what New Jersey-based Merck & Co. hopes will prove to be a vaccine against the virus that causes AIDS.

Since turning to prostitution after a divorce 13 years ago, Adams has seen friends and co-workers die from the disease. Prostitution is illegal but widespread here, largely ignored by the authorities.

"It's rare for anyone who lives here not to know AIDS and what it can do," said Adams, a heavyset woman dressed for work in a tight-fitting yellow dress and bright-red lipstick.

AIDS is the leading killer of people aged 15 to 44 in the Caribbean, claiming 24,000 lives in 2005, a rate second only to that of sub-Saharan Africa. And according to the United Nations, nearly three-quarters of those infected live on the island of Hispaniola, which the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti.

Discrimination

At least 70,000 of the Dominican Republic's nine million people are HIV-positive, and discrimination discourages many from seeking testing or treatment. Among prostitutes, about 3.6 per cent are infected, although researchers report rates as high as 12 per cent in some areas.

The prostitutes, who will spend much of the next four years travelling to Santo Domingo for injections and check-ups, were recruited from brothels across the country. They are among some 3,000 people in eight countries, including Jamaica, testing the experimental vaccine - a combination of deactivated cold viruses and synthetically produced HIV genes meant to train the body to destroy infected cells.

Any long-term risks will take years to discover, but once doctors explained there was no way to contract the disease from the vaccine, they found plenty of volunteers at Adams' brothel in Las Guaranas, a town of dirt streets and low-slung houses surrounded by rice fields about 75 miles (120 kilometres) north of Santo Domingo.

The programme pays the women's meals, transportation and US$30 for a lost day's work. A handful have dropped out, and the clinic provides health training and occasional gifts like bags of cosmetics to keep others from losing interest.

For many, the greatest reward is pride.

"We are doing it for the world," said 38-year-old Lucila Mendoza Ovalle.