The National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA), has declared that Kwara State is one of the 36 states of the federation with low incidence of HIV infection in the country. The NACA Chief Programme Officer (CPO), Mr. Tajudeen Arowolo made this declaration in Ilorin, during a four day free medical outreach organised by the agency at Oja –Tuntun and  Boboko, Ilorin, the state capital.

 

Arowolo, said that North-central geo-political zone of the country was reputed to be the most endemic zone in the country with the highest number of recorded cases of HIV.

 

According to him, North-central was said to be most endemic because of the high cases recorded in Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa states as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). “Even out of the states in North-central, Kwara has the lowest rate.”

 

He said NACA has carried out similar free medical outreach in many  states of the federation with huge successes, adding that NACA screened, tested and gave results to 4, 441 people in Kogi State out of the 5,000 targeted people.

 

He said out of the 4, 441 people that were tested, only 19 women tested positive to the disease.

 

The CPO said the 19 people were immediately referred to nearby health facilities nearest to their place of residence to commence free treatment.

 

He said as a result of the regular outreach programmes; there had been remarkable decrease of HIV cases in Nigeria as a whole. ‘NACA’s constant awareness campaign and sensitisation have helped in controlling the spread of the disease in the country,” he said.

 

Arowolo, attributed the success of the outreach to the strategies adopted by NACA, one of which he said, was the inclusion of free medical treatment for other illnesses like malaria, cough and high or low blood sugar level.“All nursing or pregnant women that came for the test and treatment would be given free treated mosquito nets,” he noted.

 

Speaking with journalists at the occasion, Mr. Ibrahim Umoru, Executive Director, Good Health Educators Initiatives, an NGO appealed to all Nigerian adults to endeavour to know their HIV status.

 

Umoru one of the facilitators of the programme said Nigeria has the second highest burden of HIV globally. “Counseling and testing for HIV is one of the entry points for HIV intervention,” but lamented that Nigerians performed low in this regard. Umoru also lamented that just over seven million Nigerians knew their HIV status out of over170 million people in the country.

 

According to him, people should come out to be tested as gone were the days when testing for HIV meant death sentence.“Today, HIV is a manageable disease if it is discovered early enough before it is blown to AIDS”, Umoru added.

 

Kwara State Action for the Control of Aids (KWASACA) Project and Monitoring Officer, Alhaji Abdulkadir Abubakar, also reiterated that the prevalence of the disease in Kwara has reduced drastically. Abubakar attributed the feat to KWASACA’s sustained advocacy, sensitisation and awareness campaign against the disease and its management.

 

By Hammed Shittu