MSF drug dosage table for treating small children with HIV/AIDS in Thailand. Click the image to view larger.

Pediatrics: Missing Tools, Makeshift Solutions

Htway Htway is only 10 months old and has HIV. When she started receiving antiretroviral treatment at a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinic in Myanmar, her weight was a mere 3.3 kg and her height was 58 cm. She was failing to thrive and was facing one opportunistic infection after another. Htway Htway was receiving cotrimoxazole to ward off PCP, a form of pneumonia, was on other antibiotics to fight Mycobacterium Avian Complex and was receiving treatment for tuberculosis.

Both of the baby's parents are HIV positive, and her father is about to start treatment. During the day the child stays in the MSF feeding center and the nurses administer the drugs. In the evenings, Htway Htway is looked after by her 14-year-old sister, who is responsible for giving her the drugs.

Choosing the correct ARV regimen for Htway Htway will not be easy for her doctor.

The first, simplest option would be to start Htway Htway on MSF's standard first-line regimen for children: stavudine (d4T), lamivudine (3TC) and nevirapine (NVP) in a fixed-dose combination (FDC) tablet.

To improve adhrerence and help children cope with the disease, MSF developed child-friendly tools such as colorful medication calenders and diaries, and children's story books to help children understand HIV/AIDS.

But because there are no FDCs specifically designed for children, she will receive the adult FDC split in half. Although it is the best available solution, breaking tablets means that you cannot be sure that the child always gets the exact dosage required, and for some weight ranges, additional NVP is needed to avoid under-dosage.

But for Htway Htway, things are more complicated than that. Her doctor would like to avoid a potential metabolic interaction between NVP and the rifampicin she is receiving for her TB. So a second option would be for her to receive efavirenz instead of nevirapine. But efavirenz is not recommended for children less than three years old or children weighing less than 10 kg - and Htway Htway is both.

A third option would be to use a combination of AZT, 3TC and abacavir, as recommended by WHO for HIV/TB co-infection. But in Myanmar MSF has no access to abacavir as the drug is expensive and there are no low-cost prequalified generic versions. Furthermore, this kind of "triple-nuke" combination has significantly less potency, and 5% of patients develop dangerous hypersensitivity to abacavir.

Eventually, Htway Htway's doctor decides in favour of a fourth option: to use AZT, 3TC and NVP in syrup formulations. In this case, the dose of NVP is increased in order to compensate for the drug interaction with rifampicin (even though there is a lack of guidelines about how to modify the NVP dose in this situation).

MSF's comprehensive HIV/AIDS program in Thailand includes education classes specifically designed for children.

A drawing by an HIV-positive child receiving treatment at the MSF clinic in Thailand.