•The alliance will also promote accessible testing, optimized treatment, and comprehensive care for infants, children, and adolescents exposed to and living with HIV.
•Dr Tedros Adhanom Gheberyesus, WHO Director-General, said no child should be born with or grow up with HIV, and no child with HIV should go without treatment.
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Kenya has joined a new global alliance that seeks to end AIDs in children.
According to the Ministry of Health, about 106,807 Kenyan children below 14 years are living with HIV, but only 72,968 are on treatment.
The new Global Alliance for Ending AIDs in Children by 2030 was announced by leading figures at the International AIDS Conference that took place in Montreal, Canada, this week.
Globally, only half of the children living with HIV are on life-saving treatment, far behind adults where three quarters are receiving antiretrovirals, according to the data released in the Unaids Global Aids Update 2022.
Concerned by the stalling of progress for children, and the widening gap between children and adults, Unaids, Unicef, WHO and partners brought together a global alliance of governments in the most affected countries, to ensure that no child living with HIV is denied treatment by the end of the decade and to prevent new infant HIV infections.
Twelve countries have joined the alliance in the first phase: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Angola, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
In a statement, WHO said the alliance will seek to close the treatment gap for pregnant and breastfeeding adolescent girls and women living with HIV and optimise continuity of treatment.
It will seek to protect and detect new HIV infections among pregnant and breastfeeding adolescent girls and women.
The alliance will promote accessible testing, optimised treatment, and comprehensive care for infants, children and adolescents exposed to and living with HIV.
It will address rights, gender equality, and the social and structural barriers that hinder access to services.
The alliance will run for the next eight years until 2030, aiming to fix one of the most glaring disparities in the AIDs response.
Alliance members are united in the assessment that the challenge is surmountable through partnership.
“The wide gap in treatment coverage between children and adults is an outrage,” Unaids executive director Winnie Byanyima said.
“Through this alliance, we will channel that outrage into action. By bringing together new improved medicines, new political commitment, and the determined activism of communities, we can be the generation who ends AIDs in children. We can only win together.”
Dr Tedros Adhanom Gheberyesus, WHO director general, said no child should be born with or grow up with HIV, and no child with HIV should go without treatment.
In Kenya, nearly 40 per cent of all babies born to women with HIV acquire the virus either during the mother's pregnancy, during childbirth or while breastfeeding.
“The fact that only half of the children with HIV receive antiretrovirals is a scandal and a stain on our collective conscience. The Global Alliance to End Aids in Children is an opportunity to renew our commitment to children and their families to unite, to speak and to act with purpose and in solidarity with all mothers, children and adolescents,” Dr Tedros said.
“Despite progress to reduce vertical transmission, increase testing and treatment, and expand access to information, children around the world are still far less likely than adults to have access to HIV prevention, care, and treatment services,” Unicef boss Catherine Russell said.
“The launch of the Global Alliance to End AIDS in Children is an important step forward – and Unicef is committed to working alongside all of our partners to achieve an Aids-free future.”
Edited by Kiilu Damaris