The right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health is a basic human right. In the last decades, despite formal recognition of the right to health, its full enjoyment remains, for millions of people around the world, an elusive goal, due to obstacles in access to high quality, accessible, affordable, and acceptable life-saving medicines. Among the challenges experienced by many countries, there is a predominant emphasis on profitability of medicines and diagnostic tools, resulting in prohibitive price structures. This is the case for many people living with HIV and for millions of people to continue to be newly infected by this illness. Even though there has been much progress with the development of antiretroviral medicines for adults, children living with HIV have not been accorded priority attention in this field. These children are part of our future; they experience much suffering during their brief lives. Without access to early diagnosis and antiretroviral treatment, more than one-third of them die before their first birthday, and one-half die before their second birthday.
International efforts to address these serious challenges already have been undertaken by the Holy See, in collaboration with UNAIDS, PEPFAR, WHO, Caritas Internationalis, WCC-EAA, EGPAF, governments, private industry engaged in developing and producing pharmaceuticals and diagnostic tools, and faith-based organizations providing such services or engaged in advocacy related to pediatric HIV. Some of these projects are presented and explained in this publication.
Without continued, timely, effective and cooperative actions, HIV will continue to claim the lives of too many children and adolescents. There is an urgent need to implement attainable and measurable milestones in the efforts to end HIV among children by 2020 in order to "leave no child living with HIV behind". The collaboration between international organizations, governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and faith-based organizations is the key to close the gap between good intentions and the reality on the field.
Photo Credit: World Health Organization
