By Elizabeth Mwai

An ambitious three-year campaign has been unveiled to kick out HIV and Aids among children.

This comes amid concerns that there are 35,000 new HIV infections among newborns every year.

Head of National Aids and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Control Programme in the Ministry of Medical Services Ibrahim Mohammed said the campaign would include children in the national strategy, which has often sidelined them.

"We need to scale up our activities to rid the country off pediatric HIV and Aids by 2013," said Dr Mohamed.

Speaking during the launch of the project dubbed Campaign to End Pediatric HIV/Aids (CEPA) at a city hotel, Mohamed said stigma was still a challenge in communities and has further aggravated the spread of the virus to children.

In addition, the official observed that the fact that about 50 per cent of the 115,000 HIV positive women are delivering under unskilled care has worsened the situation.

The campaign initiated by Global Aids Alliance and led by civil societies, seeks to promote testing of infants, prevention of mother to child transmission and proper nutrition.

Kenya Treatment Access Movement Co-ordinator James Kamau decried the continued lack of funding from the Government.

He said all the children currently on Antiretroviral Therapy are supported by the Clinton Foundation.

Mr Kamau said there are at least 27,000 more children in dire need of the life saving drugs but are not getting them due to lack of funds.

The official said it was unacceptable that despite availability of efficacious medicines to prevent mother to child transmission, infants continue to get infected.

CEPA will integrate pediatric treatment, care and support including nutrition services in a bid to improve survival rates and health outcomes.

The civil societies hope the project will reduce distribution barriers and increase global supply of high quality, low cost life saving medicines.