Minister TasksGovernors On PMTCT Activities

The Minister of State for Health, Dr Muhammad Pate, has called on governors of states with high HIV burden to be part of the Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) scale up activities.

Pate, who made the call during a stakeholder’s Forum on PMTCT in Uyo at the weekend, noted that it would enable the country to reduce HIV burden to 90 per cent by 2015.

“The Federal Government is looking at what the country will do to achieve HIV zero infection; we need to focus on how to save one million lives in Nigeria.

“The state can save more than 500 lives by paying more attention to the expansion of health services,” he said.

He said the country should not apply theoretical solution to practical things as “proper information is key to knowledge.’’

Also speaking, Prof. John Idoko, Director-General, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), urged the states to develop strategy for data collection.

Idoko said data collection would enable the state to plan properly and have accurate results.

He said as part of effort to accelerate progress towards PMTCT scale up goals, there was consensus from key stakeholders that the PMTCT diagnostics in Nasarawa be replicated in other high burden states.

“The diagnostic work includes a triangulation of state specific data, a quantitative examination of patients’ need, service delivery and gaps between them.

He said it also involved “the development of hypotheses about levers that need to be pulled to achieve optimal scale up’’.

“This mission to this state is one part of several activities to replicate PMTCT deep dives in other priority state, as an integral part of national scale up efforts,” he said

In his speech, Dr John Markson, Akwa Ibom State HIV and AIDS programme Coordinator, said HIV was first discovered in the state in 1989.

Markson said as at 2010, 252,000 persons were living with HIV and AIDS in the state with 10.9 per cent prevalence.

He attributed the state’s challenges in the fight against HIV and AIDS to illiteracy, socio cultural beliefs and the long distance to primary health care centres.

Markson said the state strategies for scaling up PMTCT included integration of health service, decentralisation of primary health centre and linkage with community and private sector providers.

Others are effective coordination to avoid duplication of efforts and wastage of resources.