First Lady, Mrs Oluremi Tinubu says every Nigerian child deserves a chance to have a healthy and fulfilling life.
Mrs Tinubu also said advocacy for awareness and prevention of Tuberculosis is a priority that must be sustained.
She was speaking at a side event at the ongoing 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The First Lady spoke at two separate sessions on the Importance of innovation towards achieving an AIDS-free generation and health standards and investment towards effectively financing the eradication of tuberculosis.
On both tuberculosis and AIDS in children, she said “Nigeria’s advocacy especially at the national, state, and community levels, would be pursued vigorously as Nigeria has no reason to have high statistics of prevalence in both areas.”
Mrs. Tinubu emphasized that with the heightened drive of the President Bola Tinubu Administration in the health sector, she would be advocating enhanced actions by the wives of Governors from the states of the Federation to take the campaign about awareness and prevention to the grassroots.
She said; “Innovative approaches can be employed to develop effective methods for HIV prevention. Educational technology hubs, educational apps, and digital platforms can all be used to disseminate accurate information specific to HIV care and control. Advancement in testing facilitates early detection and prompt linkage to care thus preventing progression and transmission.
“Creative and culturally tailored age-appropriate interventions using technology and social media can promote and amplify safer sexual and reproductive practices.”
The First Lady seized the opportunity to explain that in Nigeria, there is a robust programme for combating TB through the National TB and Leprosy control programme, which is domiciled in the Ministry of Health and supervised by the Minister for Health.
She said “the Administration of President Tinubu has come up with the Renewed Hope Agenda and has emphasized severally, its commitment to restructure the Health System in the country “through improved financing, provision of modern equipment for diagnosis, capacity building, training of health care workers and transparency in governance as it regards TB response and health care delivery as a whole.
“We need to get people to speak up and know that early detection makes it treatable and we need to see that stigmatization is removed.”
Mrs. Tinubu was one of the panelists on strategies to advance global health standards and investments toward effectively financing the eradication of tuberculosis.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
