Why I love my job – Quote 10 of 10

www.worldhope.ca

“The number of HIV-positive people in developing countries with access to antiretroviral therapy increased 54% to two million people in 2006.” -UNAIDS

BIPAI was a major contributor to this number, especially among children.

Save your pats on the back for later; according to a report released last Tuesday by UNAIDS (where the above excerpt originated), 380,000 children died of AIDS-related illnesses in 2006.

Three hundred and eighty thousand...

...due to a lack of access to existing drugs.

A few pills or syrup teaspoons a day equals undead kids, healthy kids.

Smiling, playing kids.

--

Only 15% of the 780,000 children in need of antiretroviral drugs had access to treatment by the end of last year.

Only 4% of HIV-positive children received the antibiotic co-trimoxazole, recommended by WHO for HIV-positive children and infants who contracted the virus from their mothers during birth.

Children account for 14% of those in need of antiretroviral treatment in the region but only 6% are on such treatment regimens, according to the above report.

Because numbers such as these tend to underwhelm or overwhelm (for being too abstract or too big, respectively), I am going to begin a series of mini-biographies of some of these children tomorrow.

For abstract of report cited above: Antiretroviral Therapy Access Increases In Developing Countries, Hundreds Of Thousands Of Child Deaths Preventable, U.N. Report Says