[Ip-health] AFP: MSF demands action for half a million tragic AIDS infants

[Sheila.SHETTLE@geneva.msf.org]

Agence France Presse -- English

                    August 15, 2006 Tuesday 4:56 PM GMT
 MSF demands action for half a million tragic AIDS infants

 Isabel Parenthoen

 Urgent action is needed to treat more than half a million children in need
 of AIDS drugs and slash the price of these life-saving treatments, a top
 medical relief agency warned Tuesday.

 Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, MSF), said at the world
 AIDS conference that only five percent of 660,000 children around the
 world who desperately need antiretrovirals -- the so-called "cocktail" of
 AIDS drugs -- had access to them.

 The Nobel Peace Prize-winning agency also lashed giant pharmaceutical
 firms for failing to invest in pediatric AIDS drugs. Most child victims of
 AIDS live in developing countries, and caring for them does little to
 swell corporate profits, it charged.

 Many infant AIDS victims live in crushing poverty in developing nations
 and contracted the disease as infants from HIV positive mothers who
 themselves have no treatment or ante-natal care, MSF said.

 Tragically, without medical care, half the children born with HIV die
 before the age of two.

 "We know that treating children works, but with better tools, we could be
 treating so many more," said Moses Masaquoi, a doctor with MSF in Malawi.

 "We see the number of children born with HIV constantly growing in Africa,
 because expecting mothers don't have access to ante-natal care and
 children born to HIV positive mothers are largely lost to follow-up.

 "It is an enormous frustration that we meet in our daily work."

 More than 2.3 million children are living with HIV, the majority in
 sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease has cut a swathe through
 poverty-stricken populations.

 Of these, 660,000 have an immune system that has been badly compromised by
 HIV, exposing them to the risk of killer infectious diseases such as
 tuberculosis and pneumonia.

 MSF warned that international agencies already battling AIDS have been
 late to spot the devastating toll among infected children, and said if the
 situation is not tackled soon, remedies will come too late.

 Alongside the warnings, MSF released two studies which showed good results
 among HIV infected children treatment with antiretroviral drugs.

 The potential benefits from such therapies however are limited as
 pediatric medicines are overpriced -- costing up to six times more than
 equivalent drugs for adults, the agency said.

 MSF said treating children was fraught with challenges. Diagnosis is tough
 because antibody-detection tests used for adults are inappropriate for new
 borns and test results take too long to process.

 The lack of pediatric doses means caregivers must split antiretrovirals
 used for adults -- an imprecise method of treatment.

 For children who weigh less than 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds), even that
 strategy will not work. The only treatment option is a syrup that the
 agency said is difficult to measure, tastes bitter and often needs
 refrigeration.

 "Sometimes it is not possible to treat children in the villages because
 you can't refrigerate a certain type of syrup, and the other one that does
 not have to be refrigerated provokes anaemia," said Myrto Schaefer of MSF
 in Australia.

 "And then you have a baby of less than three kilogrammes who already has
 anaemia, and you can't give it to him!"

 Adding to the frustration is the fact that the drugs that do exist for
 children are vastly overpriced.

 "Because the vast majority of infected children live in poor countries,
 most pharmaceutical companies are hardly investing in developing pediatric
 formulations," MSF said in a press statement.

 Fernando Pascual, an MSF pharmacist, said the price of some infant
 formulations is reaching record levels.

 MSF released data on Tuesday showing that given the right treatment, at
 the right time, the youngest victims of the AIDS epidemic which has killed
 25 million people, can be saved.

 Figures showed that among 3,754 children under 13 years old in 14 nations,
 80 percent were alive and continuing therapy after 24 months, with few
 adverse side effects, and patients' immune systems were improving.


+++++++++++++++++++++
at Toronto AIDS Conference:  +1.416.455.7916
+++++++++++++++++++++
Sheila Shettle
Communications Officer
M=E9decins Sans Fronti=E8res
Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines
Rue de Lausanne 78
1211 Geneva
Switzerland
+ 41.22.849.8403
sheila.shettle@geneva.msf.org
www.accessmed-msf.org