The Anambra State AIDS Control Agency (ANSACA) has launched a telehealth platform to expand confidential access to HIV prevention, testing, treatment and care, particularly for people facing stigma, distance and follow-up gaps.
Executive Director and Project Manager of ANSACA, Dr Nkem Okeke, said more than 2,500 people had been tested through community, motor-park, workplace and tertiary-institution outreaches since April, with those requiring additional services linked to appropriate care.
“Testing is not the end. It is the beginning of a pathway to prevention, treatment and sustained care,” Okeke said, stressing that the agency’s goal was to ensure that “healthcare must not be limited by distance.”
- READ MORE: NACA Assesses HIV Services in Anambra State
The platform unveiled in Awka on Tuesday alongside the agency’s maiden newsletter links callers to about 176 primary healthcare centres providing HIV services across the state. It offers information, counselling and referrals for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP), HIV testing, treatment adherence and other care needs.
Okeke said the service would connect community awareness and testing with telehealth support, referral, clinical intervention and retention in care, while callers would be assessed, directed to appropriate facilities and followed up to confirm that they received the required services.
He said ANSACA had taken the HIV response closer to communities through a 1,693-member Ward HIV/AIDS Brigade across the state’s 326 wards, while strengthening interventions in 27 tertiary institutions.
According to Okeke, the platform would complement rather than replace hospitals, doctors and Anambra’s existing telemedicine system by integrating HIV services into the broader digital health ecosystem.
Delivering the keynote address, Professor Ifeoma Njelita said digital innovation should move HIV services beyond a predominantly facility-based model towards a connected, community-centred health system.
“Telehealth should be a service-delivery strategy, not a technological showcase,” Njelita said, explaining that it could support follow-up consultations, adherence counselling, PrEP and PEP counselling, referrals, specialist consultations and psychosocial support.
Njelita proposed an “Anambra Digital HIV Connect” built around digital HIV information, telehealth and teleconsultation, testing and referral, treatment adherence and retention, and data intelligence. She stressed that privacy, consent, cybersecurity, clinical governance and community participation must remain central, while digital tools should strengthen rather than replace community health workers.
The Commissioner for Information and Value Reorientation, Dr Law Mefor, who represented Governor Chukwuma Soludo, commended ANSACA for adopting digital technology to expand access to HIV services, saying the platform would complement the state’s existing telemedicine programme.
The Chairman of the Occasion, Izuchukwu Nwabueze, said the telehealth service and newsletter would strengthen communication, documentation and community engagement around HIV interventions while improving access to prevention, testing and care.
The programme forms part of Anambra’s 2026–2028 State Strategic Transformation and Sustainability Plan for HIV, which focuses on prevention, treatment, coordination and sustainability, particularly among young people and other priority populations. The event featured the newsletter’s unveiling and goodwill messages from health-sector stakeholders, community leaders and organisations involved in HIV prevention and care.
