Two out of every three children infected with HIV in Nigeria do not receive any treatment due to poor access to health care services, the United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF), has said.
The UNICEF Country representative in Nigeria, Peter Hawkins speaking at a National Dialogue on Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV in Nigeria (PMTCT) on Tuesday, said 22,000 children contract HIV annually especially at birth from their mothers, and 1 out of 7 children affected across the world is a Nigeria.
Hawkins who was represented by Claes Johansson Chief, management for results, UNICEF, described the trend as unacceptable. He added that of the 8 million pregnancies recorded every year, 6 million do not access antenatal health care services.
Hawkins said Nigeria needs to improve access to health care services so as to make progress in tackling the HIV/AIDS scourge.
He also urged the Nigerian government to be committed to the Global Aids strategy which President Muhammadu Buhari pledged to support with the goal of eliminating the HIV/AIDS scourge.
Minister of Health, Osagie Ehanire, also speaking, said despite efforts made and the progress made in getting 1.5 of 1.8 million people on Anti-retrovital (ART) therapy, there is a persisting poor outcome in the prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV.
According to him, the major bottlenecks have impacted (PMTCT) negatively include, poor coverage of antenatal care services; Unnet need for family planning; Poor testing coverage for pregnant women, not optimal and; Poor tracking and treatment for HIV-exposed infants.
Ehanire said the government needs to redouble efforts to improve the indices.
“We need more primary health care centres, we need more trained human personnel, we need increased accountability for results”, the minister said.
He informed that Kaduna and Akwa-ibom have done well with treatment and care for mothers and infants because they have improved their health facilities.
The DG, National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA), Gambo Aliyu said Nigeria needs to rejig its strategy and focus on going into communities to identify HIV cases, because “patients may never come for testing and treatment.”
He informed that 350,000 new cases were identified across the country in the last 18 months depute the COVID-19, which according to him, is an increase of 60,000 cases annually in the previous years.
