The world's biggest AIDS conference closed in Sydney last Wednesday with a call for antiretroviral drugs developed specifically for HIV-infected children.

An estimated 2.3 million children are HIV infected, with around 600,000 new infections each year. Without treatment half of all babies infected will die before their second birthday. Now, only about 15 percent of HIV infected children receive antiretroviral drugs.

Children now receive adult-designed drugs in cut-down dosages. "Most of the world has been forced to split adult tablets into child-size pieces," said Dr Annette Sohn, an expert from the pediatric infectious diseases division at the University of California in San Francisco. Under or overdoses can lead to treatment failure or put children’s health to risk.

The United Nations estimates that 40 million people are infected with the AIDS virus and that treatment had dramatically expanded from 240,000 people in 2001 to 1.3 million by 2005.

The three-day IAS conference, attended by 5,000 delegates from more than 130 countries, urged governments to allocate 10 percent of HIV funding to research, both medical and operational, to ensure treatment reached those in the world's poorest nations.

 "HIV presents one of the greatest and most complex scientific challenges of our time," said Professor David Cooper, co-chair of the 2007 IAS conference.

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