3.4m Nigerians Live With HIV – NACA

The Managing Director, National Agency for Control of AIDS (NACA), Prof. John Idoko, says 3.4 million Nigerians are living with HIV, of which 58.0 per cent are women.
Idoko gave the figure at the end of a two-day Biomedical HIV Prevention Forum on Tuesday in Abuja.
He was represented at the occasion by Dr. Morenike Ukpong, the Coordinator, New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society.
Idoko said there was a need for biomedical prevention technologies because the decline in new infections was much slower in adults than in children.
He said that an estimate of 388,864 people became newly-infected by HIV in 2011 and that 217,148 people died from AIDS-related causes in 2011.
He said that donor funding accounted for 75 per cent of the expenditure in 2011.
According to him, there is prediction that new cases may rise in Nigeria from rapid population growth because of the recent increase in Mozambique and Tanzania.
Idoko said: “To keep pace with current spending, $30 billion is required by 2031.
“Where is that money going to come from?”
He said that nationwide prevalence stabilised around four per cent but 12 + one state carried higher burden and Nigeria was behind target in several important indicators.
Bright Ekweremadu, the Country Director, Society for Family Health, an NGO, said that establishing priority populations to be targeted and identifying appropriate intervention strategies were among the primary mandate for HIV prevention funding.
According to Ekweremadu, intervention to promote accelerated anti-rethroviral therapy remained one of the most important scientific advances in HIV programme intervention.

L-R: National Representative of the Hydrocarbon Pollution Restoration Project (HYPREP), Barrister (Mrs) Joy Nunieh-Okunnu, Professor of Strategic Assessment and Sustainability and Former President of the International Association for Impact Assessment (IAIA) with its International Headquarters at Fargo, North Dakota, USA, Professor Maria Rosario Partidario, and the wife of the author, Mrs Tumini Bristol-Alagbariya