World AIDS Day 2014

This week 4,600 children will be born HIV positive around the world, without treatment half will die by their second birthday, over 90% of these children live in Africa where access to quality treatment is limited by available resources. Today just one in four of the 3.2 million children living with HIV have access to life saving medicines. We all hope that prevention to mother to child transmission of HIV programs will reduce the number of new infections to zero, however today we are failing children born and living with HIV. Even those children who have treatment it is not easy as Molly aged 11 in Kenya explains ‘I hate medicine, especially when I have to take it on an empty stomach, it makes me feel dizzy.’

Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) is the treatment needed for people living with HIV. Significant strides have been made over the last 15 years in developing new treatments, today around 700,000 children have access to ART most in the South. ART manufacturers have lagged behind when it comes to developing new treatments for children and the reasons are simple; compared to the number of adults that require ART the actual number of children is far less, and these children are dispersed and hard to find, this has led to manufactures less inclined to make medicines for this fragmented market. Infants have been much harder to diagnose too and need a sophisticated diagnostic test, thankfully better point of care diagnosis test are coming on to the market that will make it easier to find and diagnose HIV positive children.

As we know children grow, and as they grow they need different treatment strength to avoid large number of pills to be taken each day – pill burden is one of the main reasons for stopping treatment. Furthermore, many of these children have been exposed to medicines during their mother’s pregnancy (gestation) and now require more complex state of the art treatments. These treatments exist for adults but not for children. Of those that do exist for children they are often not adapted: nasty side effects, fowl taste, high alcohol content, and refrigeration – not so easy when power and refrigerators are not available.

For the children on treatment today it is lifesaving, but not without other costs. HIV positive children have greater health issues keeping them out of school. The disease has often taken their parents and they live with carers who cannot afford to provide for all their needs. Catherine was forced to drop out of school because of unpaid school fees. ‘I have never gone back to my school nor tried to raise the required balance because even if I pick the certificate and I don’t get an opportunity to go to high school then it is all in vain. I however long so much to go back to school and I have trust in God that one day I will.’ she says.

For World Aids Day, I am thankful to the International Health Community for their continued support to end pediatric AIDS and I look forward to better medicines being made available.

I also call on all of you to help the children living with HIV to achieve their dreams, the first step being to keep them in school. I have painted a series of small canvases each with a child playing at school, by purchasing the painting you are buying a school uniform, books and shoes.