NACA: We Need More Funds To Deal With HIV and AIDS

Posted on: Fri 14-06-2013

The Director-General, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Prof. John Idoko, has called for increased funding to scale up HIV and AIDS response in the country.

Idoko made this call at a one-day technical meeting on the President’s Emergency Response Plan for HIV and AIDS (PERP) on Thursday in Abuja.

President Goodluck Jonathan unveiled the PERP on May 27, 2012 at a meeting of the AIDSWATCH Africa held on the sideline of the 21st ordinary session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the AU in Addis Ababa.

The PERP is a plan for combating HIV and AIDS scourge.

He said that though Nigeria had made some progress, a lot still needed to be done to achieve universal access in 2015.

“We need revolution in prevention and treatment to put more people on treatment, all these will not be possible except there is financial revolution,’’ he said.

The Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, said that 2013 marked 32 years of HIV and AIDS existence in the world.

Chukwu said it was the greatest public health challenge facing the world today, mostly affecting Africa, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa.

He said the epidemic was complicated by socioeconomic and cultural factors, adding, “The scourge of HIV and AIDS is also compounded by challenges in the health system.’’

He said HIV and AIDS also affected all the regions of the world and every segment of society, especially women and children.

He, therefore, said that combating HIV and AIDS required a high-level political commitment, vision and leadership.

The minister said African leaders across the continent had emphasised the need for sustainable sources of funding and strengthening of health systems.

He said these included human resource and promoting access to medicines and commodities as well as development of well-coordinated partnerships.

“It is certain that for most African nations, including Nigeria to attain Universal Access and meet the MDGs 4, 5 and 6, efforts must be sustained beyond 2015,’’ he said.

He said that there were huge programmatic and financial gap in efforts to achieve comprehensive HIV treatment for all eligible persons living with HIV and AIDS.

“Therefore, we need to mobilise more funds, increase the efficiency in transparency and accountability in the use of available funds and seek other innovative financing options as the way out."

“In the area of HIV and AIDS, a substantial part of national investment in the management of HIV and AIDS is from external source,’’ he said.

According to him, challenges in depending on donor agencies pose a grave risk to the nation, and this need to be reversed.

Chukwu said the president had directed that an all-encompassing plan be developed to address challenges in scaling up HIV and AIDS services across the country.

“To dramatically improve access to treatment, we need to scale up Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission activities and HIV Counselling and Testing services,” he said.

The PEPFAR Country Coordinator, Dr Shirley Dady, said the aim of PERP is to create an opportunity to move towards creating AIDS-free generation “where virtually no child is born with the virus’’.

Dailytimes

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