Global Health Council, in collaboration with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, welcomes the HIV Strategy’s call for fast-tracking the health sector elements of the HIV response through “renewed political commitment, additional resources, and technical and programmatic innovations.”

We are pleased that the Strategy prioritizes eliminating mother-to-child HIV transmission as a key component of ending the epidemic. As the Strategy notes, “HIV transmission rates remain unacceptably high” and “high-impact interventions to end mother-to-child transmission are essential.”  We strongly encourage countries to increase their efforts to eliminate vertical transmission, focusing on access to prophylaxis for infants and treatment adherence for women through the breastfeeding period, when a high proportion of child infections are now occurring. We also encourage states to pursue WHO certification of elimination to ensure sustainable systems are put in place.

We applaud the Strategy’s attention to pediatric treatment and its message that “infants, children, and adolescents are among those who have suffered the greatest inequities in access to treatment.” African Health Ministers recently proposed a target of putting 95% of children on treatment by 2018. We ask states to pursue this ambitious goal and ensure sustained viral suppression by intensifying efforts to diagnose children, initiate them on treatment, and support their adherence over the long term. As the Strategy states, we need “expanded coverage of early infant diagnosis,” innovation for “simpler and more palatable” pediatric ART formulations, better and earlier linkage to treatment, and data disaggregation by sex and age.

Finally, we support the Strategy’s proposal for differentiated models of treatment and care based on disease stage on other factors. We would add, however, that models should also differentiate by age group, taking into account the specific risks of poor adherence, treatment failure and loss to follow-up among infants, school-aged children, and adolescents.

Posted in Blog Posts, HIV/AIDS, World Health Assembly (WHA), World Health Organization