"Children deserve the same medicines and care as adults," says Carlo Giaquinto, a paediatrician in Italy who noticed during the HIV epidemic of the 1980s that kids weren't included in clinical trials for new drugs.
Now, thanks to a seven-year, industry-funded project called connect4children, kids will be included in clinical trials for new treatments and medical devices in 20 European countries, including the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, reports the Guardian.
The network of more than 400 experts and 250 trial sites is designed to make it easier for doctors and nurses to conduct trials with children and to provide emotional and psychological support to their families, reports the Telegraph.
About half of the medicines commonly used in children around the world are tested on adults before they're approved by regulators, and fewer than 50% of medicines commonly used in children around the world have been studied in clinical trials over the past 20 years.
"All of this is because children are still overlooked in clinical trials," Giaquinto says.
"It's time to change that."
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Caroline Diehl is a serial social entrepreneur in the impact media space. She is Executive Chair and Founder of the UK’s only charitable and co-operatively owned national broadcast television channel Together TV, the leading broadcaster for social change runs a national TV channel in the UK and digital platform which helps people find inspiration to do good in their lives and communities.