The Nigerian Cabinet has approved over N8.5 billion for the building of a vaccine laboratory, procurement of laboratory equipment and testing kits for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS) by the Ministry of Health.
The Minister of Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire made the disclosure on Wednesday while briefing State House Correspondents on the outcome of this week’s Federal Executive Council meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“The Ministry of Health presented three memos, which were all approved. One of them was for the procurement of test kits for HIV/AIDS. As you all know, Nigeria has succeeded in driving down the HIV prevalence from 3% to 1.3%.
“That is based on the national indicator and the impact survey that was done recently, now we want to push it further down by being able to do more testing, particularly of mothers who may be carrying HIV and they don’t know it, and they can pass it on to their unborn children. That is sort of called the prevention of mother to child transmission and also there will be routine tests that will be done on people who may have absolutely no symptoms at all, but are carrying the HIV virus.
“So, these test kits we are procuring and we’re also including those test kits that can also detect syphilis. Syphilis, as you all know, is another sexually transmitted disease. So, this memo was presented today and passed by Council.”
He said the remaining two memos were for upgrading and equipping six laboratories of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).
“The other two were memos from NAFDAC, one of them was a memo that was meant to buy equipment for six laboratories in the country and the memo was also passed without any question, it’s to update and upgrade the laboratories of NAFDAC.
“The third one is a new vaccine laboratory that will help us when we start manufacturing vaccines. As you know NAFDAC is a regulatory organ and its job is to test the vaccines that are produced, whether they are fit or not. In order to do that, they must have a laboratory, they must have the WHO approval of what we call the Maturity Level 3. So, they are working on getting Maturity Level 3 by having laboratories, including animal house and the remodelling of the existing facilities. So, those are the three memos that came to Council.
“The price for the vaccine laboratory is N3,064,582,050.01 For the laboratory equipment, it’s N1,262,269,939. For the kits, they are N4,347,500,000,” the Minister added.
PIAK
