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Wednesday, April 24, 2024
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Nigeria

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At least 500 Nigerians die of HIV/AIDs daily, with an average new infection of 600 people every day, says Sani Aliyu, Director General, National Agency for the Control of AIDs, NACA.

Mr. Aliyu gave the figure during an interview with the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, about HIV/AIDs, aired on Saturday night.

He said although the country has achieved great heights with the support of government and the international community, a lot of help is still needed from private individuals to address the challenges posed by the existence of HIV/AIDs in Nigeria.

Mr. Aliyu noted that Nigeria is still the second most affected country with HIV/AIDs, globally behind South Africa. He called on government and stakeholders to ensure increased education of the girl child and women empowerment as a means of addressing the challenge.

He added that the global theme for this year’s event to mark the World AIDs day, “Hands up for HIV/AIDs prevention,” was adjusted for Nigeria, to match with the country’s current prevalence rate of 3 per cent.

“You know that for Nigeria the topic for this year is not ‘hands up’; when you say hands up you are giving up. It’s ‘hands on’ for us in Nigeria,” said Mr. Aliyu.

About 72,000 adolescents are reportedly living with HIV in Lagos State, officials have said.

Also according to the Borno State’s coordinator for HIV/AIDs, no fewer than 5,000 Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in 27 camps in the state are currently living with the virus.

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Dakar — “Civilians are not receiving aid, and find themselves trapped between Boko Haram and the military’s operations”

Living conditions for people uprooted by Boko Haram violence and seeking refuge in camps and towns across northeast Nigeria are more deadly than the conflict between the Islamist militants and the army, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Wednesday.

Hunger and malnutrition is widespread among the displaced in Borno State, not just in remote, previously inaccessible areas, but also in the capital Maiduguri, the medical aid group said.

Coordination of relief efforts must be drastically improved and food aid urgently delivered to people in need across Borno, where the humanitarian situation is reaching “catastrophic levels”, said MSF emergency programme manager Natalie Roberts.

“It is shocking to see so many people malnourished in Maiduguri, not just in isolated and hard-to-reach areas,” Roberts told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

“Aid actors have access, and there has been no Boko Haram presence for the last few years, but people are starving to death inside Maiduguri. Millions are in a nutrition crisis.”

MSF said it had recently gained access to Ngala and Gambaru, towns previously cut off from aid, where tens of thousands of people have little or nothing to eat and at least one in 10 children are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition.

Yet the medical charity said it was most concerned about the situation in Maiduguri, where malnutrition rates in some parts of the city are as high as those seen in conflict-hit areas.

Boko Haram violence has left more than 65,000 people living in famine in the northeast, with one million others at risk, and more than half of children under five are malnourished in some areas of Borno, several aid groups said last week.

Many women in aid camps in the northeast are resorting to selling sex in exchange for food and money with which to feed their families, medical charity International Medical Corps and Nigerian research group NOI Polls said this week.

Roberts said the aid response across Borno was insufficient and uncoordinated, leaving many people without any assistance.

“Civilians are not receiving aid, and find themselves trapped between Boko Haram and the military’s operations.”

The Islamist militant group has killed about 15,000 people and displaced more than 2 million in Nigeria in a seven-year insurgency aimed at creating a state adhering to Islamic laws.

A military offensive has driven Boko Haram from much of the territory it held in northern Nigeria, but the militants have continued to carry out suicide bombings and raids in northeast Nigeria and neighbouring Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

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The federal government at the weekend said it was already rolling out plans to eradicate Wild Polio Virus (WPV) from Nigeria once and for all.

While addressing a Press Conference to update the media on the government’s response to the recent Polio outbreak in the Northeast, the Acting Executive Director of National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Dr. Emmanuel Odu said the bulk of the fund needed for the intervention has been released.

He said the government budgeted and released a total of N9.8 billion for Polio eradication and immunization this year.

It would be recalled that after being free from Polio for two years, Nigeria recorded three new cases of the virus between July and August this year in Borno State.

But Dr. Odu said: “In the immediate response Mop-up targeting 5 local government areas, 820, 000 eligible children were vaccinated.”

He added that the first round, involving five contiguous and very high risk states, achieved the vaccination of 5.9 million eligible children.

Dr. Odu also said response campaign was implemented in 18 States in the Northern Nigeria including the FCT in the second outbreak response strategy.

“This round targets 31.54 million eligible children for which a total of 38.4 million doses of Polio Vaccines were deployed to the states”, he said.

According to him, 28,757,161 children under the age of five years were vaccinated in the exercise which took place between 17-20 September, 2016.

He said apart from efforts being made by Nigeria, all other members of the Lake Chad Basin involving; Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Central Africa Republic were also carrying out a synchronized implementation of Polio campaigns in response to the Nigeria outbreak.

The third outbreak response, fourth and fifth Immunization Responses will take place on 15-18 October, 29 October- 01November and 19-22 November respectively.

While expressing optimism that when fully implemented, the campaign will finally eradicate the Polio Virus in the country, Dr. Odu said there were still some areas not accessible in the Northeast.

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The Dangote Foundation, in collaboration with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is set to invest $42m in primary health care programmes to ensure a polio-free Nigeria by 2018.

Although the World Health Organisation delisted Nigeria on the list of polio-endemic countries, the country is not very free of the virus.

Speaking at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the Kaduna State Government, the President, Dangote Foundation, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, said the donor foundations would provide technical and financial support to strengthen routine immunisation programmes in Sokoto, Yobe, Borno, Bauchi, Kano and Kaduna states.

According to Dangote, the MoU is to ensure that all primary health centres in the states have the necessary infrastructure to store and give vaccines to children.

He said, “Bill Gates’ commitment to eradicating polio in Nigeria is clear. He has told me that immunisation is life-saving, cost-effective and a cornerstone of every primary health care system.

“What we need is the leadership of the Federal Government and the commitment of the state governors. It is critical to the success of this MoU. For me, bringing health care to the community is something I care about deeply, so it is important that communities trust that health services are there for them.”

Gates, in his remarks, said that apart from eradicating polio, his foundation was committed to reducing infant mortality in the country.

Commending the states for providing their counterpart funding of the programmes, he noted that the two foundations would always offer assistance to them.

The United States Ambassador to Nigeria, James Entwistle, explained that the MoU demonstrated the commitment of the Nigerian Government to solving its health challenges.

The envoy said, “This agreement, more importantly, serves as a model on which to build future partnerships between developing partners and the government of Nigeria.”

On behalf of the benefitting states, Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir-el-Rufai, promised the implementation of all agreements reached.

El-Rufai said, “It is evident from the contributions of my colleagues that our key strategy is to ensure a reliable supply of vaccines in the right quantities at the right time. If we can do that for vaccines, we can deploy the same for every other health commodity our people need.

“It is essential that we earn the trust of our communities by delivering predictable, reliable health services if we want our citizens to come to the health facilities. By getting immunisation right, we can ensure that families access other critical treatment against malaria, diarrhoea, among other ailments.”

Meanwhile, President Muhammadu Buhari has said that governors would be members of task force on polio in the country.

The president also promised that his administration would sustain the funding of vaccination programmes in the country.

PUNCH.

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