Nigeria is working towards ending the transmission of HIV/AIDS in the country in the next three years.
The Director General of the National Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS (NACA), Dr Gambo Aliyu, disclosed this while declaring a workshop open on Monday in Sokoto on “Capacity strengthening of key and vulnerable populations in access to HIV services efficiency”.
According to him, with the current successes recorded in the fight against the disease, the United Nations target of 95, 95, 95 for 2030 could be achieved in the next three years.
The target entails identifying 95 percent of the people living with HIV/AIDS; ensure access to retroviral drugs to 95 per cent of patients; and suppressing the virus in 95 percent of the patients so that they could not transmit it to others.
“We will do everything to achieve this target in the next two to three years not in the next 10 years as stipulated by UN,” said Dr Aliyu. He said the country had identified 279,000 patients between September 2019 and September 2020, which was the highest in the history of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.
He said 1.2 million people living with the disease had so far been identified and put on drugs across the country.
He explained that the training was necessitated by the dwindling resources for the fight against the diseases because most of the interventions by the developed countries have ceased. “So, we are developing their capacity on resource mobilisation and utilisation so that they could continue to live their normal life,” he said.
Earlier, the state Commissioner for Health, Dr Ali Inname, said there were over 8000 people living with HIV/AIDS in the state.
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