The Oyo State Government and the US Government, in a move by the APIN Public Health Initiative, have launched the Antiretroviral Surge Response, designed to find and treat HIV positive patients in the state.
The event, held on Wednesday at the Emeritus Professor Theophilus Ogunlesi Hall, Ibadan, would officially kick off an accelerated testing plan to identify people living with HIV and place them on treatment and scale up the number of those currently receiving HIV/AIDS treatment, to end the epidemic in the state and the country at large.
Speaking at the launch, the US Consul General in Nigeria, Claire Pierangelo, disclosed that about 1.2million Nigerians are currently receiving free HIV/AIDS treatment for life and not less than $6billion worth of assistance has been provided to Nigeria since 2003, by the American government, to fight HIV/AIDS in the country.
Pierangelo stated: “Our goal is to increase that number as much as possible so that we can end the epidemic here in Nigeria and the cooperation between the US government, the Nigeria government and the Oyo State government is the key to doing that.”
“It is a wonderful initiative with many aspects of cooperation, but the bottomline is that we need to find and treat HIV patients. So we are very grateful for our friends here in Oyo State for the cooperation that we are getting,” she said.
On her part, the Country Director, US Centre for Disease Control, Dr Mary Boyd, said Nigeria and the US government have been partnering on putting people living with HIV on treatment for at least 18 years and “this is another phase in our partnership, where we are now trying to find those remaining individuals who are infected and don’t have access to treatment.”
In his remark, Governor Seyi Makinde, who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Mrs Olubamiwo Adeosun, noted that the HIV Treatment Surge Light launch is expected to increase awareness of communities and health care providers on the need for women of reproductive age group, children and adolescents to get tested for HIV.
He said the effort is aimed at increasing HIV case finding by testing across all 33 LGAs in a strategic way and linking those positive to free treatment, adding that it is geared towards achieving HIV epidemic control in Oyo State by year 2030.
The Chief Executive Officer, APIN Public Health Initiative, Dr Prosper Okonkwo, explained that the essence of the launch of the ART Surge is to accelerate the efforts to close the gaps of patients who are yet to be tested and placed on treatment.
Okonkwo noted: “The point is that we have been doing HIV work in Nigeria for over 20 years and we have made considerable progress. The war against the spread is gradually being won. Until the last person is free, nobody is free.”
“We are here to launch a surge up of our activities in tackling the spread. It took us 20years to get 24,000, we need to get 23,000 more and we don’t want to wait for another 20years, we want to do that in maybe two years. It is the activities that is surging, not the HIV,” he concluded.
Fielding questions, the Lead Prevention and Community Programme, APIN, Mrs Bola Thompson, explained that the campaign is aimed at scaling up testing activities in the state, saying the government is committed to identifying the about 75,000 people living with HIV and ensuring they are placed on treatment and followed up “to ensure that they are viraly suppressed.”
