Mother-to-child HIV/AIDS transmission to end in Kaduna in 2020 —UNICEF

THE United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has  expressed confidence that Kaduna State would soon  end all new cases of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS .

UNICEF’s Chief of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, Dorothy Nbori-Ngacha, stated this shortly after she and her team met with the state’s Executive Council at Government House, Kaduna.

Nbori-Ngacha explained that to achieve the target, the state intended to reach 90 per cent coverage, where all pregnant women in the state had access to preventive services.

She said that the state government was committed to achieving the target, considering the huge amount of resources released for HIV response.

The HIV chief explained that she was in the state to brief the council on what UNICEF, in partnership with the state government was doing to address the scourge of HIV in the state.

“We want the council to know what has been achieved in terms of response, how the state is fearing and where we want Kaduna state to be by 2018.

“On where Kaduna is, I want to say that the HIV prevalence trend is going down and has continued to go down.

“Although the ongoing HIV/AIDS Indicator Survey would give us the current prevalence rate, early indictors have shown that the prevalence trend is on the downward trend.

“There is also an upward trend in the coverage of essential services for prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, treatment of children as well as adolescent and young person services, “she said.

“We need to accelerate actions at finding the adolescent, test them and put the positive on treatment and keep them on treatment.

“There is therefore, the need to engage the communities, families, the media and other relevant stakeholders on demand creation to the adolescent,” she said.