Dr Cordelia Katureebe, the head of Pediatric and adolescent HIV prevention manager says that more than 8,000 children were born with HIV. 50 percent of these are resistant to nevirapine, a first line drug for treatment of HIV positive babies.
She notes that this is partly because the drug is taken by the mothers during pregnancy to prevent transmission of the virus to the baby. Because of this, the baby's body is used to the drug leading to resistance after birth, she adds.
Medical research indicates that drug resistance develops when the virus begins to multiply in the body.
"As HIV multiplies, it sometimes mutates and produces variations of itself. Variations of HIV that develop while a person is taking HIV medicines can lead to drug-resistant strains of HIV"
Katureebe says that in order to manage the treatment of such resistant children, they are shifted to the second line drugs which is a combination of nevirapine and lopinavir syrup. So far more than 3000 have been shifted to second line treatment while 48 are already using third line treatment.
But one of the mothers to an HIV positive child who preferred anonymity told URN that lopinavir syrup is also resisted by the babies because of a bitter taste. She says that quite often the child spits it out or refuses to take it.
She adds that they have now opted for the tablets with an intake of 7 pills per day.
In order to address such challenges, Uganda has joined several other African countries in a pilot study of a new HIV drug for children. The new drug is in form pellets that fit into a capsule which caretakers can give to children by adding it to soft food or breast milk.
The pilot study is spearheaded by the Joint Clinical Research Center and will be conducted at JCRC centres in Fort Portal and Gulu, Baylor clinic Mulago and the Epi Research Centre in Mbarara, according to Dr Olawale Salami, the pediatric HIV project manager for Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative-DNDi an organization funding the study. The same study is ongoing in Kenya, Mozambique and Cameroon.
The study targets 350 participants weighing between 3 to 25 Kilograms who were resistant to the first line treatment. The study is aimed at children's responses to the drug in terms of suppressing the virus, side effects on the child, resistance but also how the care takers rate the drug.
Katureebe says the new drug addresses the challenge that care takers and health workers have been faced with especially with storage of the syrup.