Generic HIV drug for children to be rolled out in Africa in 2021 — A newborn baby, as yet un-named, is given a dose of the drug AZT,a preventative medicine to reduce the risk of HIV passing to him from his mother, 30 year old mother who is HIV positive. She was enrolled during pregnancy in a programme preventing mother to child transmission of HIV that offered her medicines, counselling and advice and ensures the baby is given a drop of the anti retroviral drug, nevirapine to prevent transmission of HIV within eight hours of birth. After that the drug AZT is given every 12 hours for 12 days, as part of enhanced PMTCT services. Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission services in Lesotho only reach 15% of women, meaning that every year thousands of babies are born with HIV. UNICEF is supporting the government to provide these programmes across the country and wants to continue to roll out the services to all women in Lesotho. (Photo by Gideon Mendel / Corbis for UNICEF/Corbis via Getty Images)

A strawberry-flavoured tablet for children living with HIV will be rolled out in six African countries in 2021.

It will be the first generic pediatric version of a key anti-retroviral available even for babies.

According to UNITAID, Some 1.7 million children worldwide live with HIV, but only half receive any treatment – often hard to administer due to the bitter taste or incorrectly dosed by crushing adult pills.

Some 100,000 children die of AIDS annually.

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UNITAID spokesman Herve Verhoosel told a Geneva news briefing said that, “For many of those children, the HIV virus is not suppressed due in part to lack of availability of effective drugs that are palatable and properly adapted for them.”

UNITAID, a global health agency, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative have reached a pricing agreement with the generic drugmakers Viatris and Macleods for the dispersible pediatric formulation of dolutegravir (DTG), a statement said.

The first-line HIV treatment is recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) from the age of four weeks and 3 kilos (6.6 pounds), but it had been out of reach for babies because of the lack of appropriate formulations.

The estimated cost for combination therapy will now be some $120 for a child’s annual treatment, against $480 currently, making it a “game-changer” for poorer countries, UNITAID said.

Benin, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe are due to receive the first tablets in the first half of 2021, Verhoosel said.

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Related topics: HIV HIV Clinical Trials programme