HIV/AIDS: UNICEF, experts task FG on early infants diagnosis

THE United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other experts have called on the Federal Government to pay serious attention to early infant diagnosis for HIV/AIDS; as 1,358 new cases were recorded among children born to pregnant women living with HIV/AIDS in 2017.

The experts made the call at a two-day Workshop/Media Dialogue on “Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT),” holding in Calabar, Cross River State. The Media Dialogue is organized by the Child Rights Information Bureau (CRIB) of the Ministry of Information and Culture, in collaboration with UNICEF.

Quoting the HIV Services Statistics of 2017, the Assistant Director, PMTCT at the National AIDS and STIs Control Programme, Dr Ijaodola Olugbenga, stated that 1,358 children among those born by women with HIV/AIDS were infected at birth; thus creating a new challenge to Nigeria as a country.

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Also, about 54, 000 paediatrics out of the 221,000 children who are affected by the virus are on Anti-Retroviral treatment.

Dr Olugbenga pointed out that even though Nigeria has made giant strides in the fight against HIV/AIDS, government needs to put more efforts on paediatric health.

He also said that Nigeria has the second largest global burden of HIV/AIDS and also contributes the largest proportion of new vertically acquired HIV infections among children.

According to him, Nigeria is responsible for over 12.4 per cent of the global burden of HIV infected children with an estimated number of 267,000 children living with HIV.

He regretted that out of over 9 million pregnant women recorded in Nigeria every year; only about 40 per cent of them uses established health facilities for antenatal clinic, adding that this trend is unacceptable.

However, Dr Olugbenga stated that Nigeria is committed to the goal of Eliminating Mother to child transmission by 2020 and has initiated a number of strategies to achieve it.

He said: “To achieve the goal of elimination of MTCT, at least 90 per cent of HIV infected women must have access to comprehensive prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) services including anti-retroviral drugs ARVs during pregnancy, Labour delivery and breastfeeding periods”.

The limitations to PMTCT, according to him, include inadequate budgetary appropriations for HIV programmes in the national and state budgets, dwindling support from partners and socio-economic challenges, poor health-seeking behaviour, culture, myths, misconception and stigmatization.

Specifically, he said stigmatisation has really limited the efforts to achieve Prevention of Mother to Child transmission.

In his presentation, the UNICEF HIV/AIDS specialist, Dr Abiola Davies noted that with the current decline in global funding for HIV in the country, Nigeria must look at ways to redress the poor funding and seek how to galvanize funds to meet the global target.