Treating a child with HIV is not simply a matter of providing a lower dose of adult medication. It must be specially formulated for a child’s body.

Kiefer said, "The situation with pediatric drugs is better, but we still don’t have enough drugs for children. And we don’t have drugs that are easy to administer. We have syrups, which are heavy and messy and they taste terrible. I know that some of the drug companies are looking at sprinkles, at different ways of delivering the drugs, but it still is a big problem. For older children we can give them the child doses of the three drugs in a tablet form and that’s much easier. The infants it’s still a big problem."

She said that as the number of infected infants goes down, the pharmaceutical companies have less incentive to develop new drugs for children. That’s because developing the drugs is expensive and the return on investment may be small.

"There is still a lot of pressure being put on the pharmaceutical companies because we need better drugs. We need to test more drugs in children; and we definitely need new ways to administer the drugs so that it’s palatable and easy for the caregivers to give to the children," she said.

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation focuses much of its work on preventing pediatric AIDS in the first place. That starts with treating HIV positive pregnant women. Kiefer says the top of the line treatment is now a three drug regimen, but a two drug regimen is still widely used.