ZHUL-QI’DA 23, 1429 A.H.
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18, 2008
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HIV/AIDS fight: UK pledges £100m to Nigeria
From Muktar Magaji, London
An extra £100 million will be channelled into fighting HIV and AIDS in Nigeria, British Minister for International Development Ivan Lewis announced yesterday.
The new six year ‘Enhancing Nigeria’s Response to HIV and AIDS’ (ENR) programme will reach out to improve access to prevention, treatment, care and support services to those most vulnerable to HIV infection.
The ENR programme will reach 27 million young people with HIV and safer sex messages, and will use 1.2 billion condoms to reduce the number of new infections by 50,000 every year.
The Department for International Development (DFID) will work with the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), as part of the special relationship between the two organisations in Nigeria.
Statistics show the battle against the infection is being won slowly.
The Nigerian national average of HIV prevalence has gone from 5.8% in 2001, to 4.4% in 2005, to the latest figure of 3.6%.
This is because of a national and state wide drive which has included a package of preventative programmes and activities including the scale up of counselling and testing, better education and public awareness, more acurate information and also greater access to anti-retroviral treatment, care and support.
Yet Nigeria has the second highest number of people living with HIV in the world.
Over three million people are HIV positive and one million children have been orphaned by the disease.
Since it was formed in 2000, NACA has increasingly focussed its efforts on becoming more strategic and co-ordinated in its response to the epidemic.
This complements the commitment DFID has made across health, education and other sectors in Nigeria to strengthen programmes to fight HIV.
The £100 million ENR programme aims to among others, target the most vulnerable groups in society - including women and children – and reduce those with HIV being discriminated against and marginalised.
Similrly, it is aimed at supporting the use of accurate and reliable information to help set up new programmes and use existing ones more effectively and encourage a change in behaviour in the population, including the use of condoms as the most effective means of prevention
The funding will also strengthen government systems, including health systems for treatment, at national level and in up to eight states.
Minister for International Development Ivan Lewis said: “The fall in HIV prevalence in Nigeria in recent years is great news but the country still faces huge challenges in fighting the epidemic.
“The country has the second highest number of people in the world living with HIV and so we must continue to take action to stop its spread. That is why the British Government is investing £100 million to support Nigeria as it increases its drive to prevent people getting infected.”
NACA welcomed Ivan Lewis as well as the head of DFID Nigeria, Eamon Cassidy, and other important members of the minister’s team.
DFID has played a crucial role in brokering debt relief for the country, and contributed to a host of aid programmes in the country.
