Nigeria identifies, enrolls 1.7M people in HIV treatment

By Ibrahim Garba Shuaibu

KANO, Nigeria (AA) - Nigeria's National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) said Wednesday that it has identified and enrolled 1.7 million Nigerians for treatment of HIV.

“It is our responsibility to identify and enroll all of them for care, and I believe we are doing well because we have identified 1.7 million of them,” NACA’s Director for Community Prevention, Care and Support Services, Alexander Ogundipe, said in Calabar, the capital city of Cross River State.

Ogundipe said NACA is on the right path in terms of its mandate to coordinate activities on an HIV response.

“Our mandate is to identify people living with the virus. There are supposed to be about 1.9 million Nigerians,” he said.

“You must be objective on how you rate or assess yourself. You must ask: Is the assessment from the eyes of those who give you money, those of beneficiaries of your services, or those other partners?”

“These are the criteria we check once in a while to help fine-tune our services,” he added.

Ogundipe said it is the responsibility of NACA to train, guide and give policy direction to officials of the State Agencies for the Control of AIDS (SACA), but it is the duty of state governments to fund them and ensure they carry out HIV response services.