The Ministry of Health and Child Care says HIV and AIDS treatment on children has improved to over 75% from less than 40% in the past two years.
There are 156 000 children who are living with HIV with only 46,319 (40%) of them being on treatment.
The low uptake of Anti retroviral treatment on children has been caused mainly by the “delicacy” nature of infants which has not only left paediatric ARV expire hospitals but also claimed thousands of children’s lives.
Head of HIV and TB unit in the Health and Child Care Ministry Dr Owen Mugurungi told journalists attending a health talk show on new HIV guidelines set by World Health Organisation which was organised by the Health Journalists Association of Zimbabwe in Harare that paediatric ART has improved to over 70% in a space of two years.
“I am happy to announce that as at the end of 2013 we were at 39% in terms of ART coverage on children, and end of 2014 we got slightly at above 56% and as at the end of this year we are actually even better in paediatric than in adults which I think with satisfaction that we have done a lot in improving and making sure that more children are put on treatment,” said Dr Mugurungi.
“In adults we are slightly around 70% and in children we have moved beyond 75% in terms of coverage which is a good thing which we feel we can also maintain and sustain”.
Dr Mugurungi said they have superseded   the problems which were leading to the low uptake of paediatric ART.
“Initially there were no paediatric formulations, we used to break the tablet and crush it and that itself was a challenge but we now have paediatric formulations,”Dr Mugurungi said.
“The second issue was that in adults we used the CD4 count machines (to measure the amount of the virus) and in paediatric we used to have percentages and so we calculated and not everybody was good at that”.