THE Director General, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA),Nigeria, Professor John Idoko, has described as unacceptable, that 70,000 babies were still born with HIV and 30 per cent of people with HIV were on HIV treatment despite effective technology to treat and interrupt the transmission of HIV from mothers to children.
Professor Idoko, who was speaking in Ibadan at an academic seminar on reproductive health in Nigeria organised to mark the 70th birthday of an icon of obstetrics and gyneacology, Professor Oladapo Ladipo, stated that these were challenges against recorded successes already made in reducing the prevalence and stabilising the epidemic in the country.
According to Professor Idoko, treatment was a potential tool in the prevention and spread of HIV, so the need to ensure that more people that tested positive for HIV were placed on ARV treatment.
The NACA boss, who decried the increase in HIV treatment gap, stated that the number of new infections outpaced scale up treatment and, as such, the need to integrate HIV with other related services such as tuberculosis and malaria to ensure Nigeria’s ART coverage is increased and to ensure people accessed care early.
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