Clinton starts anti-AIDS program in developing nations

Former President Bill Clinton foundation will work with the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) and others and will provide low-cost AIDS drugs to more than 60 000 Aids-infected children in China and nine other countries, expanding a program already underway in Thailand and Brazil.

His foundation will donate $10m to provide AIDS-suppressing pediatrics drugs to infected children in Asia, the Caribbean and Africa. The foundation will spend about $2 million on drugs and $3 million on clinics in 10 countries where local doctors can be trained to treat children.

The money, which the foundation hopes will increase with donations from other donors, will also fund a new program to help Aids sufferers in rural Africa, Clinton said.

“One in every six Aids deaths each year is a child,” Clinton said. “Yet children represent less than one of every 30 persons getting treatment in developing countries today. These children need hope.”

About half a million children worldwide are estimated to be living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Only about 15,000 to 25,000 are receiving treatment in developing nations, and half of those are in Brazil or Thailand, countries with substantial anti-AIDS programs, Clinton said.

Stephen Lewis, the U.N. special envoy for AIDS in Africa, called the action a “breakthrough for the treatment of children” because they had previously lacked care throughout so much of the developing world.

Clinton said he was particularly interested in treating children at the orphanage in Calcutta, run by the late Mother Teresa. “I promised Mother Teresa before she died I would go to her orphanage,” he said.

‘’The world cannot continue to turn its back on these children,” Clinton said yesterday in a news conference in New York. ‘’We can’t give up on those who have been and continue to be born with the virus.”

Doctors are often reduced to splitting or crushing adult pills. Babies need syrups, when available, and must somehow be coaxed to swallow three spoonfuls of three different drugs twice a day. Diagnosis is also harder, since children’s immune systems are immature.

According to the foundation, Cipla, an India-based pharmaceutical company, agreed to reduce the price of anti-retroviral treatment medicines for children by more than 50%. The medicines are normally up to five times as expensive as adult Aids medicines.