16/6/2006
France Hosts Children And AIDS Colloquium

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy opened the colloquium on "Childhood and AIDS, Rolling back AIDS in Developing Countries” which is being held in Paris at the Cité des Sciences de la Villette on June 15 and 16.

Co-organized by the French Foreign Ministry, the French committee for UNICEF, Sidaction, ESTHER, the National Aids Research Agency (ANRS), the mayor of  Paris and the French Development Agency (AFD), the colloquium is part of  the world campaign, “Unite for children, Unite Against AIDS,”  launched by all the UN agencies on October 25, 2005.  

The 350 participants come from countries involved in the fight against AIDS in children. The objective is to increase public awareness about the urgency of increasing prevention and helping children affected by HIV/AIDS, especially through access to drugs and therapies.

Over two million children under 15 are carriers of the HIV virus.  In the countries most affected by the disease, more than half the deaths of children under five are due to AIDS.  Currently it’s estimated there are 15 million children who’ve lost parents to AIDS in the world, of whom 80% live in Africa, south of the Sahara.  This number is expected to climb to 18 million in five years.

For the past 18 months the French Foreign Ministry has been supporting a project in partnership with UNICEF to support treatment for AIDS orphans in three African countries: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Africa.

IDPF/UNITAID, which French Foreign Minister Douste-Blazy presented to the General Assembly UNAIDS in New York on June 2, is obviously part of the strategy to fight AIDS, in particularly to help children. 

Initially, UNITAID/IDPF  will focus on a few priority sectors, including paediatric antiretroviral drugs.  This choice responds to the need to develop paediatric formulas that are not available for children in the south today.  From this point of view, UNITAID is fully in line with the objectives to be discussed at the colloquium.