The United Nations Children's Fund hopes that a color-coded box of anti-HIV drugs and illustrated instructions will help dramatically reduce mother-to-child transmission of the disease in Africa, Reuters reports.

UNICEF will distribute the boxes to 30,000 pregnant women in Kenya, Cameroon, Lesotho and Zambia beginning this month. The organization said that each box costs around $70, which is less than half the cost of one year of drug treatment for an HIV-positive infant.

"In the developed world, there are now very few babies born HIV positive, but in Africa, there are still over 1,000 born every day," Jimmy Kolker, head of HIV/AIDs strategies at UNICEF, said. About half of HIV-positive infants in Africa will die by age two without medical intervention.

Problems supplying drugs to people at the correct time and dose have hindered the U.N.'s goal of ending mother-to-child transmission by 2015, according to Reuters. This goal will not be met without innovative ideas, Kolker said, adding, "What we need is a way to empower women to take charge of their own care."

The box includes medication and instructions to prevent an HIV-infected woman from transmitting the virus to her newborn, even if she cannot read and does not visit a health clinic until after the birth. The box is divided into three color-coded sections: blue to designate medications to be taken during pregnancy, yellow for drugs used during labor and pink for medications for the woman and infant after delivery. Pictures are used to help women with low literacy levels understand when to take the drugs and in what doses (Kelland, Reuters, 11/9).

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