Every month, 500 more kids to go on ART

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Every month, 500 more kids to go on ART

6 Aug 2008,

MEXICO CITY: In a massive scale-up of life-saving anti-retroviral treatment

(ART) for paediatric cases, 500 new HIV infected children are being placed on

ART every month by India's National AIDS Control Programme, a top official told

TOI on the sidelines of the 17th International AIDS Conference here.

Paediatric HIV drugs are also being made available in all the 174 ART centres in

India so that children get equal importance against adults as far as treatment

for the deadly disease is concerned.

ART will increase the lifespan of these infected children by 10-15 years. With a

paediatric drug formulation guideline in place, which was created by the Indian

Academy of Paediatrics for Naco in 2006, toxic HIV drugs are no longer being

administered to children by dividing fractions of adult formulations according

to the child’s age, which often led to under- or over-dosage, causing

resistance to the drug.

The health ministry has also cleared the setting up of seven state-of-the-art

paediatric ART centres in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata

and Imphal which will not only help scale up India’s paediatric HIV programme

but will also deal with complicated cases of drug resistance among such infected

children.

According to Naco, India is home to 100,000 HIV infected children of which

40,000 urgently require ART to survive. However, only 10,000 such children are

receiving the treatment. India has a stock of paediatric doses of ART to treat

15,000 children which has been donated to Naco by the Clinton Foundation.

Till now, all ART centres had medical officers administering the anti-AIDS

drugs, most of whom weren't paediatricians. So now, we have decided to train all

paediatricians in hospital-based ART centres on the drug dosage protocol for

children with HIV. We will continue to upscale the paediatric HIV programme till

we have all the 40,000 children needing ART, receiving it, NACO's ART consultant

Dr B B Rewari told TOI.

Talking about how children get infected, Dr Rewari said about 35% of the 2.6

million estimated HIV cases in India are women. About 15%-35% of the children

get the infection from their mothers. Majority of the children living with HIV

could be saved by timely administration of paediatric ART, he added. HIV

infection progresses more aggressively in infants than in adults.

The immune system in childhood is underdeveloped and acquiring HIV infection

early in a child’s life thwarts its further development.

" Early treatment within the first few months of life can dramatically improve

the survival rates of children with HIV. That’s why the DNA-based tests will

be vital in India's fight against HIV, " Dr Rewari added.

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