Children with AIDS given a death sentence: experts
Canadian Press
TORONTO -- Drug companies and apathetic governments around the world are handing millions of children living with HIV/AIDS a death sentence by not treating or preventing the disease, said experts gathering in Toronto for the International AIDS Conference.
There are some 2.3 million children around the world living with the disease but they "always come last," said some of the 20,000 delegates expected to attend the global conference which begins Sunday. Although drugs exist to prevent a mother from transmitting the disease to her child at birth, many children especially in Africa don't live to see their fifth birthday.
"It's intolerable," said Stephen Lewis, UN Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Africa. "It's such an indictment of the international community and of multilateral agencies, I don't know how they can hold their heads up. It isn't as though we haven't known about this for a very long time."
Lewis said drugs are available, and are used very successfully in the Western world, to treat and prevent the disease from birth. But he said governments need to make children living with the disease a priority, as do drug companies.
"Why is the life of a Western child worth so much more than the life of an African child?" he said. "We can begin saving lives tomorrow morning."
Some say it's not that simple.
Cathy Wilfert, scientific director of the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, said "children always come last" in the battle with HIV/AIDS.
Pharmaceutical companies aren't in a hurry to develop pediatric drugs because it's not as lucrative, she said. Development costs are higher and companies don't see a "precise audience," Wilfert said.
"This attitude is a long-standing problem," Wilfert said. "Unless you provide an incentive for developing a drug for children . . . you can't just politely ask folks who develop drugs to do that for you."
Even with the appropriate drugs, Wilfert said it also costs money to train those in developing countries to screen for HIV/AIDS and administer the treatment. But she said it's worth it.
"If we don't prevent infections, we will never be able to turn the tide of the epidemic," Wilfert said. "It's too easy to sit at home and think the work that needs to be done has to be done by someone else. This is a global community."
Chewe Luo, senior adviser with UNICEF's HIV/AIDS division, said Third World governments are more accustomed to treating immediate diseases like malaria rather than HIV/AIDS which requires longer treatment.
But she said many countries are starting to adjust their thinking, as are drug companies.
"(Companies) realize that it's never going to be for money," Luo said. "It has to be their social responsibility to respond and we have to keep the pressure on them."
Still, the fight against HIV/AIDS isn't progressing fast enough for some.
Karen Vance-Wallace, executive director of the Teresa Group - a Toronto-based support centre for HIV children, said the cases she sees are heartbreaking. One 11-year-old patient once wondered aloud "who invented AIDS and why do I have it?"
Vance-Wallace said there is still a lot of stigma around the disease that doesn't exist around other illnesses.
"I wish they called it cancer," she said. "Then the whole community would come together and say 'how can we help?' "
Although thousands around the world are gathering in Toronto to talk about the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS, Stephen Lewis said he's growing increasingly impatient. He said he's tired of hearing excuses for the deaths of millions of children when treatment exists to save them.
"We know what to do," he said. "For God's sake just implement the stuff and stop talking about it. Every time you talk, you lose another life while you're talking."