Babies suffer lack of paediatric HIV test kits

Kenyan health experts say AIDS-related illnesses claim the lives of many babies because of the lack of child-friendly HIV detection kits in the country. According to Dr James Kiarie of the Kenyatta National Hospital, 35 percent of HIV-positive babies in Nairobi, the capital, died by their second birthday, as there were only two specialised machines for detecting the HI virus in the country - one at Nairobi Hospital and the other at the Nyumbani Children's Home. The local East African Standard newspaper quoted Kiarie as saying, "Babies have very many antibodies from the mother and to establish whether a child is HIV-positive or not is very difficult before 18 months." Paediatric diagnostic equipment costs around US $40,000 per unit in Kenya, while the cost of testing a child is about $55. In its 2004 Global Report, UNAIDS said 90,000 infants were exposed to HIV by birth and breast-feeding every year, at least 46,000 of them were infected and 60 percent died before their second birthday.