Despite significant progress in scaling up HIV services for children living with HIV, the treatment gap for children persists and children continue to present lower rates of viral suppression than adults. In the past 10 years, global stakeholders have come together to enable more focused and coordinated action to make age-appropriate optimal formulations more rapidly available to infants, children and adolescents living with HIV.

These include the WHO-led Paediatric Antiretroviral Drug Optimization (PADO) group, which has established medium- and long-term priorities for drug development to accelerate access to optimal formulations in the context of fragmented markets for antiretroviral drugs in children.

Since its first release in 2013, the PADO list has provided an evidence-informed priority list and a clear and consistent message to guide industry and interested stakeholders on the most needed antiretroviral formulations for children to be investigated and developed. This list has reduced the number of unnecessary formulations and has become a critical tool to focus research and development efforts and resources.