Punch, 6 August 2014

The Director-General of the National Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS, Professor John Idoko, has stressed the need for concerted efforts in order to sustain the project especially in the face of the various successes recorded since the emergence of the virus in 1986.

The NACA boss stated this during the national dialogue on effective implementation and post 2015 development agenda in Abuja.

He said Nigeria as a country has seen remarkable reduction in new infections, significant reduction in the elimination of mother to child transmission, and use of treatment as prevention.

He said, "We cannot relent in our efforts, beyond 2015 we must ensure that the HIV/AIDS programme is still on the agenda.

"It must be part of the sustainable development goals, which meant be pushed to 2020.

"We cannot afford to relax."

The representative of PERFAR, Dr Obinna Ogbunefe, said Nigeria needed to show more commitment and to focus more on states where the virus was quite high.

He said, "We need to change the story of Nigeria, our focus should be on demonstrating impact on areas where the virus is high, though resources are reduced, impact should be the watchword.

"We need to have a responsible data, and ensure we engage people at both state and local governments to make this work, but what is of great importance is the engagement of the private and public partnership to help the process."

Dr Pat Matemilola, advised that before strategies are implemented, stakeholders should be consulted with the end users and the community at large.

He added that those responses would help the country come up with better policies that can be practical.

Speaking for the state actors, Dr Okeh Chimezie, called for the states to fund their programmes stressing that, "internal funding should be key, having ownership of the programmes is of paramount importance if we are to ensure that the interventions get to the end user."

Aborisade, Abuja

Source: Punch