“Not only are we acting today to put children on equal footing with adults, we are also working to help countries reach their goal of delivering high-quality, comprehensive, and integrated care and treatment services for patients with HIV/AIDS on a wide scale.” — President Clinton
Each year, as many as 700,000 children become infected with HIV. In 2005, 570,000 children under the age of 15 died of AIDS-related causes, representing 18% of all AIDS-related deaths, while children represent less than 6% of total infections. 80% of those children would have lived at least another ten years if they had been able to access antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to the World Health Organisation, Without ARV (Antiretroviral medication) treatment, 50% of HIV-positive children will die within the first two years of life, and 80% will die by the age of five.
It has been repeatedly proven that when children receive ART and other necessary care for HIV, 95% will survive beyond six months, and 90% will survive beyond two years. Children account for one in every six AIDS deaths, yet children represent less than one of every thirty persons getting treatment in developing countries today. ARVs give these children a chance for life and drastically reduce opportunistic infections. The time has come to focus on the pediatric AIDS epidemic and give these children a chance for a healthier and longer life.
President Clinton launched the Pediatric HIV/AIDS Initiative in April 2005 in order to save the lives of infected children. When the Pediatric Initiative was launched, only about 10,000-15,000 children were receiving antiretroviral medication (ARVs) worldwide, outside of Brazil and Thailand. Their first year goal was to double the number of children in the developing world receiving treatment (outside Brazil and Thailand) and to make that happen, in its first year of operation, the Pediatric Initiative placed orders for pediatric ARVs to treat an additional 10,000 children. One of the Pediatric Initiative’s first goals was to increase access to pediatric ARVs. To accomplish this goal, along with lowering the cost of the pediatric formulations, they sponsored treatment for 10,000 children in the developing world. These donations were ordered for children living in many countries in the developing world, including Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Malawi, Namibia, Uganda, Zambia, Cambodia, China, and India. After the first year of treatment, the Pediatric Initiative team worked to help governments absorb these children into their national treatment systems. To battle this problem effectively, the Initiative aims to assist countries in implementing large-scale, integrated, care, treatment and prevention programs that will turn the tide on the epidemic. It partners with countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia to develop operational business plans to scale-up care and treatment. The Initiative’s long-term goal is to develop replicable models for the scale-up of integrated programs in resource-poor settings.
To accomplish this, the Initiative is introducing business-based procedures to HIV/AIDS care and treatment systems to improve, for example, drug storage, tracking and distribution; program management; and information sharing.

Source:Clinton Foundation

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