HIV is increasingly affecting the health and welfare of children and undermining hard-won gains in child survival in some of the highly affected countries. Recent estimates from UNAIDS suggest that, globally, about 2.1 million children younger than 15 years of age have HIV.

The roll out of paediatric HIV care and treatment is faced with three challenges:

lack of appropriate paediatric ARV formulations, delayed infant HIV diagnosis, and lack of skills of health professionals to manage cases. The manual is expected to address the third challenge. It is an addendum to the “Pocket book of Hospital Care for Children,” as well as to IMAI and IMCI guidelines. WHO initiated the collaborative development of this manual because existing guidelines, including the “Pocket Book of Hospital care of Children,” were found inadequate to provide specific guidance for the complex management of paediatric HIV at district hospitals.