Paediatric medication: enough pussyfooting around…

[23 March 2009 - 11h40]
[mis à jour le 23 March 2009 à 16h39]

Paediatric medication: enough pussyfooting around

A gift of 9.7 million dollars from the WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will speed up the availability of drugs for paediatric use. Because, as things stand, therapeutic progress has been slow in the area of child medication: 50% of the products administered to children have in fact been designed and developed for adults!

It is a serious situation. Across the world, around 1,000 children under the age of 5 die every hour. And too often the drugs available (which, incidentally, are perfectly effective for adults) are not specifically formulated for such young patients. With the result that dosage errors are 3 times more common among children than among adults.

The gift from the Gates Foundation has three objectives: to determine the optimum galenic forms (small tablet, standard tablet, soluble tablet, powder form, etc); to draw up dosage guides for essential drugs already available for use with adults; and finally, to step up research into drugs for paediatric use.

The WHO will collaborate with UNICEF on this project. “We have already made some progress, but too many drugs are still in use that have not been correctly tested for children”, explained Dr Hans Hogerzeil, director of essential medicines and pharmaceutical policies at the WHO. This venture is an excellent example of coordination between United Nations institutions and leading experts.

The problem addressed by these partners has already caught the attention of members of the European parliament who, in December 2006, adopted a regulation on paediatric medicines. This was 2 years ago, but since then no report on this action has yet been made available…

Source : WHO, UNICEF, Fondation Bill and Melinda Gates

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