HIV-positive babies in Kenya will early next year receive the long-awaited, powerful ARV that has a strawberry flavour.
Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said the new formulation will improve adherence and reduce side effects in children. The new treatment called Dolutegravir or DTG will cost about Sh4,000 a year.
It will come in the form of a pill that is dispersible in water and is easily tolerated by children. About 106,807 Kenyan children below 14 years are living with HIV, but only 72,968 are on treatment.
Many of the children on treatment respond poorly to treatment because they take anti-retroviral medication that is not correctly dosed or bitter to taste.
Despite being the World Health Organization-recommended first-line treatment for children since 2018, an affordable DTG has been unavailable to children under 20kg so far because of a lack of dispersible tablets that are considered age-appropriate formulations.
It will now be available, thanks to a landmark agreement from Unitaid and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) who have helped reduce the cost from about Sh41,000 a year to Sh4,000.
“This announcement marks a dramatic shift for the quality of HIV treatment for children. Kenya intends to be a first-adopter of the new paediatric DTG 10 mg formulation, which will improve treatment, reduce unpleasant side effects, and help children to adhere to their treatment and live healthy lives,” Kagwe said.
“We are delighted that for the first time Kenya and other countries can provide children the same quality of treatment as adults, which has been made possible through the development of this new formulation.”
It is expected the new treatment will enable children to successfully remain on medication and prevent thousands of premature deaths each year, transforming paediatric HIV treatment in low- and middle-income countries.
Health CS Mutahi Kagwe said that last year, 4,333 children were killed by the Aids, being 11 per cent of all HIV-related deaths in 2019.
CHAI CEO Iain Barton said in a statement: “This innovative collaboration will, for the first-time, enable children living with HIV in low-and middle-income countries to access the same first-line ARV medication at the same time as those in high-income countries.”
The product will be made initially available in Kenya, Benin, Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda and Zimbabwe in the first half of 2021, with plans for rapid scale-up of dispersible DTG 10 mg across a broad set of countries.
Most common pediatric drugs today include a syrup that is 40 per cent alcohol, and has a bitter metallic taste that lingers for hours.
Children generally have to take the medicines twice a day for the first four years of life but they only need to take the DTG pill once.