In its attempt to curtail the spread of HIV/AIDS in the country, the federal government, under the President’s Comprehensive Response Plan (PCRP), plans to avail 80 million Nigerians, aged 15 and above with their HIV status.
President Goodluck Jonathan made this known Tuesday at the AIDS Watch Africa Champions breakfast meeting held at the International Conference Centre (ICC), Abuja.
After the breakfast meeting, the president also had a closed door meeting with his Kenyan counterpart, Uhuru Kenyatta, after which they signed a bilateral agreement covering areas of health, terrorism and foreign relations.
According to the president, other aims of the PCRP are the enrolment of an additional 600,000 eligible adults and children into Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) and the provision of ART for 244,000 HIV-positive pregnant women.
The plan is also intended to provide access to combination prevention services for 500,000 Most-at-Risk-Populations (MARPS) and four million young persons, as well as activation of 2,000 new Prevention of Mother-To-Child Transmission (PMTCT) in addition to 2,000 ART service delivery points across the country.
The president explained that the plan became possible after looking at the previous performance of countries in matters relating to HIV/AIDS, its shortcomings and what was needed to successfully execute the programme.
“What is even more important is our political will to continue to make a difference in the lives of persons living with HIV/AIDS and to prevent the spread of the scourge,” the president noted, adding, “The response to the HIV/AIDS scourge must be designed to enhance human dignity and to protect its citizens’ inalienable rights under the rule of law.”
He observed that despite the proliferation of HIV in Nigeria, significant achievements had been made in reducing the zero-prevalence from 5.8 per cent in 2001 to 4.1 per cent in 2010, although there were still gaps in overall access to HIV/AIDS services.
On the outcome of the meeting between Jonathan and Kenyatta, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs II, Nurudeen Mohammed, explained that Nigeria and Kenya also agreed to cooperate in the global fight against terrorism in order to ensure world peace and stability.
Reading a communique issued after the meeting, Mohammed said the two leaders agreed to exchange information and encourage more direct contact between the capital authorities of both countries aimed at combating international terrorism and other transnational crimes such as human trafficking and money laundering.
Also, the African Union (AU) Summit on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, known as Abuja+12, endorsed the use of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), an insecticide banned worldwide for several years, as one of the steps to bring malaria under control on the African continent.
Nigeria’s Minister of Health, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, informed the gathering that the World Health Organisation (WHO) had approved the use of DDT for indoor purposes in areas where mosquitoes are sensitive to it, but not for agricultural use as it could harm the environment.
He said South Africa, Namibia and Erithrea, among other countries, were already using it.
His South African counterpart blamed the West for being hypocritical, saying when they had need to use something, the thing was deemed good but when it came to Africa they painted it black. He said: “If we stop using DDT, we are exposing our citizens to death.”
There is a high rate of resistance to most insecticides by mosquitoes necessitating the call for the reintroduction of DDT. “For malaria, Africa remains the continent most heavily affected, with severe effects on maternal and child health,” Dr. Nkosazana C. Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission, said.
“Even though malaria is cheaply preventable and curable in Africa, it continues to kill, on the average, a child every 30 seconds! And this is totally unacceptable!
“One of the greatest challenges we need to address is the dependency of many national responses to AIDS, TB and malaria on external financing and foreign-produced medicines. In the case of HIV, for example, over 60% of continental investment is mobilised externally and over 80% of treatment is imported.
“We therefore need to accelerate the implementation of the earlier ‘Abuja Commitments’, stepping up the mobilisation of domestic resources and strategies for innovative financing to strengthen the health systems,” he said.
The African leaders agreed to create greater access to health which should include community access to nutrition, information and systems to promote good health, in addition to comprehensive and affordable basic health services.
They also noted that nutrition was of paramount importance because malnutrition, as is the case with many other diseases, would impair the immune system of the victim, thereby exacerbating the health condition. They further stressed the importance of research towards eliminating HIV/AIDS infections and sexually transmitted infections.
THISDAY
© dARA for Royal Times of Nigeria Newspaper, 2013. |
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posted in Health by Tunde LEMUEL