The Clinton Foundation has given Kenya a blank medical cheque with a pledge to pay for the treatment of all HIV-infected children, easing the financial burden on their families.

Direct costs of buying medicine is estimated to be more than Sh2 billion annually. This excludes costs associated with awareness campaigns and nutrition.

Gerald Macharia, the Clinton Foundation Country Director, confirmed that the organisation has committed to making treatment accessible to as many children as possible beginning next year.

"We have no budget limitation for Kenya," Dr Macharia said in an interview. The foundation has hired 1,120 nurses on three-year contracts to boost the human resource needs of Kenya's public health system.

Kenya has 102,000 children infected with HIV, down from 120,000 children infected in 2005. Of those infected, only 14,000 are on anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment with another 60,000 in dire need of treatment.

"The problem is that [Kenya] started treating children too late," said Dr Macharia, a reality that is common across Africa.

It costs about Sh13,000 to treat an HIV-infected child per year using the generic drugs. This cost rises to Sh100,000 with use of branded medicine.

The foundation has also committed to conduct a major campaign aimed at preventing mother to child transmission, that will costs hundreds of millions of shillings beginning next year.

In October, the foundation launched a Sh70 million awareness campaign targeting pregnant women and parents of HIV-exposed children. It is aimed at enabling the ministry to put 10,000 new children on ARVs by the end of this month.

Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health Dr Hezron Nyangito said the drive to increase uptake of paediatric HIV services requires more than a campaign to taking action by their guardians.

The compassion by the Clinton Foundation is expected to ease the burden of treating HIV positive children. However, challenge remains because of the failure by parents among other factors to take their children for testing.

According to the Ministry of Health, one of the major challenges affecting testing and treatment of HIV positive children is lack of human resource.

The ministry is facing a shortage of 16,000 nurses according National Nurses Association chairman, Luke Simba K'odambo.

Diagnosing HIV in children is also a complicated process. If children are not diagnosed within the first two years of being born they die because their mother's antibodies wear-off when they are 18 months old.

The best testing time is after six weeks and is done by extracting their DNA (blood protein) and testing it for virus. This helps to separate their DNA from that of their mother.

Today only five laboratories across the country have the technology to test infants. They include one based at Eldoret, Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Kisumu, the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Welcome Trust laboratories in Kilifi, and the Walter Reed Centre, a US Army project in Kitale.

World Health Organisation (WHO) data indicates that the recorded survival rate for children with HIV stands at 27 years and is getting better.

Despite this, it remains difficult to treat HIV positive children because their medicine is more expensive unlike for adults. Adult medicine is cheaper because there has been a lot of competition among the drug manufacturers.

Also, testing medicines on children is a challenge because ethical practices require informed consent from people participating in clinical trials, which is difficult to obtain in the case of children.

In the past week, the WHO launched a campaign to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop medicines better adapted to treat children with diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. WHO has compiled the first international list of Essential Medicines for Children, which includes 206 products that tackle priority conditions and are safe for children.

The United Nations health agency says about six million children younger less than five years old die annually because they do not receive appropriate medication for treatable diseases.