The first international Expert Consultation on Paediatric Essential Medicines, jointly held by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nation's Children's Fund (UNICEF), has delivered a plan to boost access to essential medicines for children.
"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 WHO. "Too often, the right medicines for children, in the right dosages and formulations are missing from the spectrum of available treatment options. WHO and UNICEF will work quickly with partners to change this."
Ten million children die every year, many of them from diarrhoea, HIV/AIDS, malaria, respiratory tract infection or pneumonia. Effective interventions - classified on WHO's list of essential medicines - exist for these illnesses but there's a lack of knowledge of how best to use these medicines in children, and a lack of paediatric formulations of them.
During two days of intensive discussion held 9-10 August at WHO's headquarters in Geneva, a mix of more than 20 developed and developing countries, non-governmental organizations including Médecins Sans Frontières, regulatory agencies, UNICEF and WHO staff prioritized a long-needed approach to overall paediatric care.
A top priority resulting from the meeting is to dramatically expand access to much needed child-focused formulations such as fixed dose combinations (several pills in one), crucial for children's correct use of medicines and treatment adherence.
The plan also calls for the improvement of medicines and prescribing guidelines addressing the entire range of infant and child care needs. Priorities include respiratory infections, neonatal care, palliative care for end stage AIDS, for HIV/TB co-infection and for other opportunistic infections, and improved electronic access to the latest WHO drug information.
The WHO Expert Consultation warned that without a model of best practice guidelines and paediatric formulations, and a buy-in at national levels right down to local care centres, then children - who in many countries make up half of the population - will continue to be considered as therapeutic orphans.