NACO's Children's Day gift to HIV positive kids

Bangalore, Oct 29 (UNI) As a Children's Day gift to HIV positive children, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) will roll out paediatric drugs for them on November 14.

The news was expected to bring solace to hundreds of parents, whose children were on Anti Retroviral Therapy (ART), the only treatment available for people with HIV/AIDS. There was no cure for AIDS, but ART, the multi-drug treatment, prolonged life and enhanced its quality among people living with HIV/AIDS.

To begin with, NACO had decided to provide paediatric drug formulations to 10,000 infected children in the existing 36 ART centres all over the country. The number of ART centres would be doubled shortly.

At present, the drug was administered by dividing fractions of adult formulations according to the child's age, which might lead to under or over-dosage through human error causing resistance to the drug over a period of time. The new formula of two paediatric three-in-one dose combination would overcome this challenge, besides the hardships being faced by parents in administering the drug.

''In Karnataka, ART Centres at Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, Bangalore, and KIMS, Hubli, will start providing the drug to children below 15 years, who are in clinical Stage 3. According to World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, it was the stage where the CD-4 count was less than 15 per cent,'' WHO Consultant on ART Dr Sudheer Jangey told UNI.

He said that in Bangalore, the Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health would be the Regional Paediatric ART Centre among the six centres of super treatment proposed to be set up in the country.

According to UNAIDS, 1,20,000 children in the country were living with the virus in 2004. The NACO had estimated that around 60,000 new infections occurred last year and according to rough estimations, around 2,50,000 Indian children were HIV positive.

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