TERRIFYING STATISTICS: 3.4 MILLION NIGERIANS INFECTED WITH HIV

Prof. John Idoko, the Managing Director of the National Agency for Control of AIDS (NACA), has announced the official statistics: 3.4 million Nigerians are living with HIV, 58.0 % among these are women.


Idoko, represented at the occasion by Dr Morenike Ukpong, Coordinator, New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society, gave the figure at the end of a two-day Biomedical HIV Prevention Forum held on Tuesday in Abuja.

He stated that an estimate of 388, 864 people became newly-infected by HIV in 2011, and that 217,148 people died from AIDS-related causes in 2011.
He said that donor funding accounted for 75 per cent of the expenditure in 2011.
He added that there exists a prediction that new cases may rise in Nigeria from rapid population growth as a results the recent increase in Mozambique and Tanzania.
“To keep pace with current spending, 30 billion U.S. dollars is required by 2031. Where is that money going to come from?”

He said that nationwide prevalence stabilised around four per cent but 12 + one state carried higher burden and Nigeria was behind target in several important indicators.
Mr Bright Ekweremadu, the Country Director, Society for Family Health, an NGO, said that establishing priority populations to be targeted and identifying appropriate intervention strategies were among the primary mandate for HIV prevention funding.
According to him, intervention to promote accelerated antirethroviral therapy (ART) remained one of the most important scientific advances in HIV program intervention.