Following the dedine in funding by international donor agencies, the need to adopt new strate-gies for funding of activities to check transmission and spread of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria has been stressed.
This was the highpoint of the Media/Legislative Roundtable organised by Koyenum Im-malah Foundation (KIF) held recently in Asaba, Delta State.
The forum, which focused on efforts at the executive and legislative levels to midwife into reality the law transform-ing the Delta State Committee on HIV/AIDS (DELSACA) into a full-fledged agency, was dismayed by the sharp decline in the sectoral budgetary allocations for combating HIV/AIDS in Delta State from approved figure of N250 mil-lion in 2015 to N110 million in proposed figure for 2016.
Participants while expressing the urgent need to sustain the gains of the DELSACA which saw the rate of HIV prevalence in the state dip from 5.8 per cent to 3.5 per cent to its pres-ent rate of about 0.7 per cent in a few years, described the drop in budgetary allocation for girl-child education from N12 million in 2015 to a paltry N500 (five hundred thousand naira) in the 2016 estimates as grossly inadequate.
"There is no gain-saying for the fad that there is an urgent need to grant DELSACA an agency status. As it is, the current situation is that DELSACA is being shortchanged. It cannot access the very many opportunities which several international organisations and donor agencies offer for the fight against HIV/AIDS", the KIF Project Manager, Miss Hope Nwadishi, pointed out while presenting an analysis on the budgetary provision for the programme in Delta State.
The forum however expressed optimism that the executive bill-before the Delta State House of Assembly would be passed and duly signed into law in the next few weeks since it has reached the crucial stage with its consideration at the committee of the whole House last week.
Executive Director of KIF, Faith Nwadishi, stressed the need for a private public partnership (PPP) approach to getting around the new funding challenge as several donor agencies over the last couple of years had scaled down their support for HIV/ AIDS programme in the country.
A joint committee made up of representatives of the state Women Affairs and Youth Ministry, the state legislature, the media in the state as well as technical experts from civil society organisations (CSOs) was constituted during the roundtable.
By: Omon-Julius Onabu in Asaba
This Day News
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