The federal government has been enjoined to pay more attention to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and also improve funding for the disease.
Nigeria country representative for ONE, Edwin Ikhuoria said in a statement that it is only by doing so that the country can effectively end the epidemic.
ONE is an international campaigning and advocacy organization of more than seven million people taking action to end extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa.
Ikhuoria said Nigeria would have dedicated $7.31 billion (about N1.4 trillion) more to health in 2013 alone if it had spent 15 percent of its budget on the sector as it promised to do in the 2001 Abuja commitment.
“If only 20 percent of the amount was dedicated to the fight against AIDS in Nigeria, N58 billion could have been available as additional domestic resources for the fight against HIV/AIDS. This amount could provide ARV treatment to 2.9million patients for one year. This amount could have pushed us much further than we are today”, he said. In a new report published on World AIDS Day, ONE warned of a growing complacency in the global fight against HIV/AIDS and raised alarm over an estimated $12 billion annual shortfall in what’s needed to finally stop the epidemic.
Current global spending on HIV/AIDS was estimated at $20 billion in 2014 and needs to reach $32 billion by 2020 in order to change the trajectory of the deadly disease.
“The progress we have made against HIV/AIDS is so powerful that it’s easy to relent into a false sense of security about the size of the fight in front of us,” ONE Director of Global Health Policy Erin Hohlfelder said.
“The world is still nearly $12 billion short annually of what it will take to end this disease- we need governments, companies, and philanthropists to step up and provide the resources needed to stop AIDS in its tracks. It’s time we think differently about the way we finance the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
By: Ojoma Akor
Daily Trust News
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