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UN Agencies Present Plan to Bring Essential Medicines to Children

With millions of children dying every year from treatable diseases, United Nations agencies have devised a plan aimed at increasing children's access to essential medications.

The World Health Organization (<"http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2006/pr42/en/index.html">WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (<"http://www.unicef.org/">UNICEF) held a joint meeting in Geneva last week, where experts formed a strategy to expand access to child-focused formulations and improve the medicines and prescribing guidelines for the entire range of infant and child care needs.

"Children are often hailed as the hope and future of humanity, but they don't benefit enough from pharmaceutical research and technology," said Dr Howard Zucker, Assistant-Director General at the World Health Organization (WHO).

Some 10 million children die every year, many of them from diarrhoea, HIV/AIDS, malaria, respiratory tract infection or pneumonia. Effective treatments for these illnesses exist, but there is a lack of knowledge of how best to use such medicines in children, as well as a lack of paediatric formulations.

Under the plan, UNICEF's supply division said it would work with industry to promote the development of paediatric formulations for HIV/AIDS medications. It also promised to work towards painless remedies, better-tasting medications and new mini-tablets to treat other diseases, as well as to emphasize the importance of climate zone considerations in creating and distributing new formulations.

The WHO's Director for Medicines Policy and Standards, Hans Hogerzeil, said the agency would work towards ameliorating the cost of many medicines, especially "for children in resource-poor settings where there is enormous need."

Source: United Nations

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