Nigeria Govts Step Up fight Against HIV

The Federal and State Governments have reaffirmed their determination to fight and stall the spread of HIV in the country .

They made the commitment on Monday at the national-state engagement meeting in Abuja.

Speaking at the meeting, the Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS, Dr Temitope Ilori, said there is a need to deconstruct and redefine what the HIV programme sustainability means.

Ilori said, “Let me begin by emphasising that there’s no way we can solve the HIV problem at the national level in the states, the local government, our wards. Nigeria cannot solve the HIV epidemic alone from the national level.

“We all have our roles and responsibilities in this sustainability plan, our sub-national stakeholders are critical to this plan and the epidemic is far from over. We must do things differently, hence the New Business Model of doing things if we must move forward.

“Over the last two decades, the HIV response in Nigeria has been largely donor-dependent. This has made government-mandated structures less visible and disengaged from the programme. There is a need to do things differently. To sustain the response, we must ensure that the government at all levels are fully engaged in the response for our people.

“For instance, there is no reason why any child should be born HIV-positive under our watch. We have the technology and the resources; all we need is the shared will to end vertical transmission between mothers and their children. I look up to you all to ensure this happens.”

The UNAIDS Country Director, Leo Zekeng, said remarkable progress has been made regarding HIV response in the country and globally.

“We’ve made remarkable progress in the AIDS response, globally, regionally, and in the country. We are seeing more people in treatment. As a result, AIDS-related deaths have declined. We are seeing new infections on the decline. We are also seeing government institutions and structures being in place, strategic documents in place.

“But you will agree with me that the way the response has been implemented so far, so relying primarily on external resources, the AIDS response being implemented as a vertical programme is not sustainable. So the challenge we have at hand now as we get closer to ending AIDS is how do we transfer some of those responsibilities to the NGOs, to the states in such a way that partners can play a different role.

“When we talk about sustainability, it doesn’t mean that development partners are packing, and they’re leaving. We are here, but playing a different role, but gradually our LGAs, our states, and communities need to take a greater role in such a way that our programmes are sustained, and implemented with maximum increased domestic resources,” he noted.

The Executive Secretary of Kwara State AIDS Control Agency and the Secretary of Chief Executives of the State AIDS Control Agency Forum, Dr Alabi Babajide, emphasised the need for developing an HIV sustainability plan.

He said, “The most important thing that we are here to do is to align our thoughts, bring in stakeholders, the experts, all of us to come together and develop a roadmap that will speak to what the national is supposed to be, and when the document is developed, it will be further adapted at the sub-national level to key into the peculiarities of each sub-national space as far as HIV response is concerned.

“It’s also an opportunity for us during the review of the implementation of our sustainability plan, to look at areas that we did not even think about in the first place, or look at future challenges that might be emanating from this new national document development, and merge it to what we already have at the sub-national level, and ensure that we fight HIV to finish and achieve our targets by the year 2030.”

Punch