The Federal Government on Wednesday said the battle to eliminate HIV/Aids by 2030 is possible particularly with help of donors from both local and international partners.
Responding to questions by Journalists at the event of the National HIV prevention conference, the Director General, National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA), Dr. Sani Aliyu said his agency intends to work in collaboration with the Ministry of health and other necessary stakeholders like National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA) including state governments to step up funds for HIV/Aids intervention.
He said, “We have a gap to meet and we will seek funding from our partners, we will also seek funding from the private sector, we will also engage with state governments and a lot of the state governments are now buying into the state insurance scheme and we will exploit what ever opportunity we can have to increase funding
He said, the agency is working hard to bring about a new approach to mitigating mother to child transmission of the HIV/Aids by providing an all-encompassing quality antenatal service to pregnant women. “ Its not only about HIV, there are also issues like malaria, iron deficiency (Anemia) and we hope to have a package that will include HIV that will encourage women to come in, be tested and if they are positive, we’ll put them on medication but we’ll also enroll them into a package that will enable them have to access proper antenatal care”, he added.
The NACA DG also called Nigerians to join in the fight against HIV/Aids by donating generously towards providing drugs and treatments for infected persons adding that the federal government was ready to use the resources judiciously while being accountable and transparent in its spending of the resources.
“I will ask people outside there, we know what will cost to deliver HIV care, if you are willing to put it into our pot we will use that money and will provide transparency”, he said.
Source:Leadership