‘5.7m Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS’

With about 5.7 million Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS, Nigeria is the second country in sub-Saharan Africa with the highest prevalence rate.

This comes as the Nigeria’s prevalence rate increased from less than 1 percent in 2001 to 3.4 percent this year.

Ex-African leaders under the aegis of Champions for an AIDS-Free Generation stated this at a courtesy call on Senate president, Bukola Saraki.

Chairperson of group and former President of Botswana, Festus Mogae harped on the need for increased domestic funding in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

In company of some UNAIDS officials, they urged the Federal Government to intensify efforts towards curbing the spread of the disease by deploying human and financial resources to the relevant agencies currently dealing the scourge.

Mogae charged the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to deploy similar energy and resources currently used in the fight against Boko Haram insurgency to tackle the scourge.

Most sub-Saharan countries are currently experiencing an alarming rate in the spread of the disease because they seemed to have relaxed their war against the pandemic, he said.

He also urged Nigerian leaders to get more involved in the war in order to encourage the agencies fighting the war because the country was currently next to South Africa in terms of HIV/AIDS prevalence.

His words: “There is a perception that we in sub-Saharan Africa, affected by this challenge are allocating neither enough financial resources of our own nor enough effort.

“The thing is that, our failure to allocate resources in addition to what we receive from abroad is an indication of the importance or lack of importance we attach to the scourge.

“I think that we should do better: we need to demonstrate that we attach importance to the fight against HIV/AIDS by allocating some of our own resources to the fight. We can’t say that the fight against HIV/AIDS is a priority and not allocate any of our own resources to it.”

The ex-Botswana President said if left unchecked, AIDS would spread in geometric progression, adding that: “The mistake we made initially in our countries was ignoring HIV when there was low prevalence.”

Mogae has won international praise for his efforts in the AIDS response in Botswana, and he is credited as one of the first heads of state in the world to publicly test for HIV.

On his part, Saraki assured that the National Assembly would continue to give required attention to the fight against HIV/AIDS, as the leadership of the National Assembly was not only concerned about the spread of HIV in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general, but would continue to assist in efforts including appropriating adequate funds to agencies in the country devoted to tackling the pandemic.

Saraki, who admitted that the country had relaxed in the war against the disease, pledged the support of the legislature to ensure the success of the fight against the scourge.