Lack of drugs 'causing childbirth HIV infections'
Lack of drugs 'causing childbirth HIV infections'
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Tuesday, 28, Mar 2006 03:36
A lack of access to HIV drugs across the world is resulting in 1,800 children being born with the disease, a new report has said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAids reports that, between 2003 and 2005, fewer than ten per cent of HIV-positive pregnant women received effective drug treatment before or during childbirth.
And that led to them passing on the disease to their children, with current figures showing that 660,000 children under the age of 15 are in need of immediate treatment for HIV.
Nine out of ten of these children live in sub-Saharan Africa, where the WHO has been focusing its attempts to increase access to HIV treatment.
As part of its "three by five" programme, which aimed to increase the number of people with access to treatment to three million by 2005, eight times as many people in sub-Saharan Africa were receiving HIV treatment in 2005 than in 2003 - 810,000 compared to 100,000.
But there is still much work to be done, today's report admits, and the hoped-for progress has not been made over the last two years.
The number of people on HIV antiretroviral treatment (ART) in the developing world has more than tripled to 1.3 million in December 2005 from 400,000 in December 2003, but has fallen some way short of the three-million target.
"The past two years have provided a wealth of experience and information on which we must now continue to build," said Kevin De Cock, the director of the WHO's HIV/Aids department.
"We intend to utilise this knowledge to focus future efforts on overcoming persistent challenges and obstacles. It is particularly important that scaling-up HIV prevention, treatment and care services contributes to strengthening of health systems overall."
The overall aim of the WHO/UNAids project is to achieve universal global access to treatment by 2010.
This target is still attainable, today's report said, but more investment and continued political interest is required.