New Initiative Provides Better Treatment for Pediatric AIDS

August 18, 2011

HIV positive child is given some jam prior to her ARV medication by a care giver near Durban South Africa, November 2010 (file photo)

A new initiative has been launched to provide more and better treatment to children infected with HIV. Organizers say pediatric AIDS in developing countries should be considered a neglected disease because it’s not receiving the attention it should.

It’s estimated one thousand children every day are infected with the AIDS virus. It usually happens when infected women give birth. It’s also estimated that 700 children die every day from AIDS.

“It’s extremely serious. There are more than 2.5 million children who are currently living with HIV. The overwhelming majority of those – something like 92 percent – live in sub-Saharan Africa,” said Rachel Cohen, regional executive director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative in North America.

Cohen said pediatric AIDS has virtually been eliminated in rich nations and therefore is not in the public eye.

New focus

“Our organization has historically focused almost entirely on the most neglected tropical diseases, like African sleeping sickness, visceral leishmaniasis or chaqas disease. But as a result of several international organizations approaching us – Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières, UNITAID and a few others – asked us to supply our expertise in the area of drug development to the problem of pediatric HIV, which is why we started looking into it in 2010 and have now formally launched our program in 2011,” said Cohen.