World AIDS Day: Stakeholders seek accessible healthcare services for HIV patients
As Nigeria joins the rest of the world today December 1, 2017, to mark this year’s World Aids Day, stakeholders have enjoined government at all levels to expand access to treatment and other healthcare services to people living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.
Titled “Right to Health – Making it Happen”, this year’s theme demands that Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS should be made to enjoy their right to health without any form of discrimination or denial of access to treatment.
Every Nigerian whether sick or healthy has right to health as a fundamental human right which should not be toyed with.
Hence, the theme is critically important and must be championed by relevant stakeholders towards realising the right to health for all Nigerians as a means to ending AIDS by 2030.
Currently, data from the National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA), shows that 3.4 million Nigerians are living with the virus with less than 1 million undergoing treatment.
Besides, Nigeria has the second largest HIV epidemic in the world and has one of the highest new infection rates in sub-Saharan Africa, even as an estimated 60% of new HIV infections in western and central Africa in 2015 occurred in Nigeria.
World AIDS Day is commemorated on December 1 every year to unite people around the HIV/AIDS response, show support for people living with HIV, and remember people who have died of AIDS
To make it happen, efforts must be directed at curbing the spread of the virus especially by preventing new infections which could only be achieved through complete access to healthcare services by those affected without barriers.
Providing antiretroviral treatment for all people living with HIV doesn’t only benefit those already living with HIV, it also dramatically reduces the chance of onward HIV transmission to others.
Despite government commitment to the HIV response, a lot of gap still exist especially in the area of funding which experts say, is critical to expanding access to treatment and prevention of new infections.
In early 2015, Former Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan signed a new antidiscrimination bill into law which secured the rights of people living with HIV, protecting HIV-positive employees from unfair dismissal and from mandatory HIV testing. However, in 2016 UNAIDS reported that 21% of people living with HIV had been denied access to health services due to their status.
This is even as the funding of Nigeria’s HIV response remains challenging as the vast proportion of money comes from international donors.
This has to change, experts say.
No doubt, removing all barriers to accessing comprehensive healthcare services for people living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria will go a long way in reducing the burden of the virus.
Director General of NACA, Dr. Sani Aliyu, said part of efforts to address the gap in treatment is to bring the issue of prevention of mother-to-child transmission to the front burner of the national response.
According to him, Nigeria at the moment is at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to preventing mother-to-child HIV transmission.
“We have thousands of babies being born in Nigeria with HIV every year. In fact one of the issue we are trying to address is the problem of HIV infected pregnant women being charged antenatal clinic user fees ranging from anywhere between N3, 000 to N4, 000 before they are seen”, he said.
Available statistics show that Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) provision in Nigeria is low, with just 30% of all people living with HIV receiving treatment in 2016. Only 21% of children living with HIV are receiving ART, and only 32% of pregnant women living with HIV are on ART.
Worried about funding for HIV programmes, Aliyu acknowledged that all over the world donor agencies are scaling down aid programmes and assistance.
Further identifying the gaps in accessing HIV treatment in Nigeria, the NACA boss said:, “What is missing are the commodities and we are partnering with the private sector to make sure that they contribute towards getting a functional HIV Trust Fund that would be responsible for buying HIV commodities and delivering them to where they are needed for the benefit of our patients.”
A professor of Haematology and Transfusion Medicine at the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Prof. Suleiman Akanmu, said only 900,000 persons living with HIV in the country are currently on a treatment programme as against the estimated total number of 3.2 million persons nationwide.
Expressing worry over lack of treatment facilities in the country, Akanmu, who is also the Chairman, National Task Team on Antiretroviral therapy (ART) in Nigeria, said there were growing incidence of resistance to Anti-retroviral drugs in the country.
His words: “Many of our patients that are on first line drugs are failing and they are supposed to be put on second line drugs which is not available now. Also we are not detecting failure on time. If we have facilities in Nigeria where people can easily do viral load test, then we would be able to detect first line failure and be talking about putting them on second line regimen”.
Recently, the World Health Organisation (WHO), alerted that drugs for HIV treatment were failing and the development is causing anxiety not just in Nigeria or other countries with high burden of HIV/AIDS, but all over the world.
Africa’s Bureau Chief of AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Dr. Penninah Lutung, said the epidemic can be controlled if new infections are reduced drastically through the current number of strategies and modules being used as combination prevention.
On his part, National Coordinator, Network for the People Living with HIV, Victor Omoshehin, demanded the removal of service charge for members of his network.
He explained: “Nigeria’s government should own up to the HIV and AIDS response. Putting money into the national response is an investment in humanity. Our continuous access to medication and our right to healthcare is a fundamental right. Government should make it happen.”
Angela Onwuzoo
