HIV and AIDS: Nigeria achieves 90% awareness

March 28, 2007 :: Chioma Obinna,Lagos, Vanguard,Lagos

Nigeria has achieved an unprecedented 90 per cent
success in creating awareness about HIV and Aids
through activities of the National Action Committee
on AIDS (NACA) even as President Olusegun Obasanjo
has signed into law the Bill to upgrade the Committee
into a full fledged agency for sustainability.

The Global Fund has also released another $180 million
for HIV and AIDS treatment for the period five years.

Disclosing these during a world press conference, in
Lagos, Chairman of the National Action Committee on
AIDS, (NACA), Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin said the body
had done well.

Continuing at the briefing tagged, "HIV and AIDS, NACA
Score Card" he went down memory lane on how bad the
problem of HIV and Aids was in the early detection in
Nigeria, affirming that Nigeria has at least achieved
90 percent awareness as against 20 per cent in 1999.

According to him, almost every Nigeria has heard about
HIV and AIDS. We have been able to bring about
behavioural change and it has significantly change
perception that Nigeria men have a special protection
against HIV and AIDS"

He recalled that in the past years, Nigeria failed to
address the problem and there was a great denial as
many people felt it was something that belongs to
someone else and all of these resulted to low
awareness and low personal risk perception, growing
disease burden, poor coordination until NACA was
established in 2001 to bring in so many actors in the
health sector.

Narrating how NACA was able to raise awareness in
Nigeria, he said, "We brought in Religious leaders,
youths, Civil society organizations amongst other we
ensured that all voices are heard and are taken into
consideration. With our mandate to build capacity and
provide enabling environment, we monitor, evaluate to
see that we are in the right direction and to ensure
that Nigeria is with good knowledge and support for
people with HIV and AIDS.

With continued efforts, "I am proud to announce that
prevalence has dropped twice, in 2003 and 2005
respectively. We are going to conduct another survey
before the end of 2007. In 2003 Nigeria HIV prevalence
dropped from 5.8 to 5.0 and in 2005 to 4.4 "

On the present, Osotimehin stated that high political
commitment has actually increased funding on HIV and
Aids. He said only in 2006, Federal Government spent
N7 billion on HIV/Aids.

With better funding, currently, Nigeria has 168
treatment sites, with over 100,000 people on
treatment.

"We have introduced Family life HIV Education
Curriculum (FLHE). We now have reduction in stigma and
discrimination and providing care for 100,000
Nigerians through funds from Global fund and GHAIN

On their plans for the future, the NACA boss announced
that President Olusegun Obasanjo has signed into law
the Bill to upgrade the committee into an Agency for
sustainability.

Osotimehin explained that the Global Fund grant was
suspended in 2005 last year due to slow disbursement
of funds contrary to speculations that it was because
of misappropriation by NACA. "There was never an issue
of transparency. What happened is that we were slow to
ensure that activities are carried out before
disbursement. We did not have any issue to resolve."

He further announced that the same Global fund has
granted a new grant of $180 million for a period of
five years.

Appealing to would be governors to support the fight
against HIV and AIDS, he said the issues should be
addressed without political coloration.

Part of his expectations were that by the end of 2007,
at least two voluntary counseling centres would be
located in each local government area of the state,
while five treatment sites would be established in
each state as against one site currently running in
each state.

Nigeria, being Africa's most populous nation with 1 in
6 Africans being Nigerian has an HIV prevalence that
is comparatively low, but the size of the country's
population meant that by the end of 2005, HIV
prevalence was put at 4.4 per cent as against the 5.8
in 2003.

However, the country has a great deal of influence in
West Africa. It is an important member of ECOWAS (the
Economic Community of West African States) and plays a
central role in ECOMOG's (the Economic Community of
West African States Monitoring Group) peacekeeping
operation . HIV/Aids has already badly affected
Nigeria society and its economy. If the epidemic
continues at its current rate, or worsens, there could
be knock on effects across the whole region.

In 1986, the first case of AIDS was identified in
Lagos, and HIV prevalence rose from 1.8 percent in
1988 to 5.8 percent in 2001. From 1986 and 1991, the
Federal Ministry of Health has carried out a National
HIV/syphilis sentinel seroprevalence survey every two
years. The 2003 survey estimated that there were
3,300,000 adults living with HIV/Aids in Nigeria, and
1,900,000 (57per cent) of these were women.

In the 2003 survey, the national HIV prevalence had
dropped to 5 percent from 5.8 per cent in 2001.
However, it found that state prevalence rates varied
from as low as 1.2 percent in Osun state to as high as
12 per cent in Cross Rivers State. Overall, 13 of
Nigeria's 36 states had an HIV prevalence over 5
percent. These figures give support to the claim that
there are explosive, localized epidemics in some
states.

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