70% Pregnant Women Not Accessing ANC In Rivers …As 136,579 HIV Positive Persons Not On Treatment

An estimated 70 per cent of pregnant women in Rivers State have not been accessing Antenatal Care Services in health facilities across the state.
Making this known recently during a three -day revalidations meeting for health care providers in Port Harcourt, the Head of Department (HOD), Strategic Knowledge Management Department of the Rivers State Agency for the Control of AIDS (RIVSACA), Dr Isaiah Mac Moses, said out of a total of 390,450 pregnant women, only 27,665 of them have been accessing ANC in health facilities across the state.
The implication of this, Mac Moses, said, “is that about 362,785 pregnant women, constituting 70 per cent, are currently not accessing ANC.
In the same vein, he also stated that an estimated 183,029 people have also been diagnosed of HIV, and expected to be put on treatment.
However, out of this number, only 46,450 have been put on treatment, leaving 136, 579 without treatment.
Dr Mac Moses, who is also the State Implementation Team, Monitoring and Evaluation Lead, stated that the inability of HIV positive persons to access treatment was due to various reasons.
Such reasons, he stated, include lack of awareness on how to access treatment, and a quest to avoid stigmatisation.
There is also the issue of distance from health care facilities and inadequate number of healthcare providers.
In order to check these challenges, Dr Mac Moses emphasised on the need for government to create adequate awareness, and for health workers to be re-orientated against attitudes capable of stigmatising HIV positive persons.
He further stated the need for the government to address insecurity in the rural areas which prevents healthcare providers from working beyond normal working hours and for the government to employ more health workers to check the near dearth of healthcare workers in the rural areas.

By: Sogbeba Dokubo