Children outside the fight against AIDS

2004/07/15 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Osasuna
• Farmakologia
• Medikuntza

The international conference on AIDS is taking place in Bangkok these days, where it has been reported that researchers do not take children into account in the development of medicines or in the development of diagnostic systems.

It seems that the child market is not enough to provide benefits to pharmaceutical companies. Of course, infected children in developed countries are much less than adults. But in other countries the situation is very different: In 2003, 700,000 children under the age of 15 were infected, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, more than half of children with AIDS die before age two.

One problem is that there is no proper way to diagnose. In fact, in children younger than 18 months, traditional tests give false positives when detecting antibodies from their mother. On the other hand, there are syrups to treat children, but few studies have been done on doses and effects, and they are also very expensive. In addition, most syrups are mixed with water and in some African countries it is really difficult to get clean water.

Photo: WHO/P. Virot