United Nations Executive Director, Mr. Michel Sidibe has said that over 500 babies born in the Nigeria are are born with HIV infections.
According to Sidibe, who made this disclosure when he led a delegation of the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS on a courtesy call on Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Tuesday, however, said there was a good opportunity for Nigeria, the second largest HIV endemic country in the world to beat the disease.
He said already there was a decline in new HIV infections in the country and that about 800,000 people in the country were undergoing treatment, adding that ending HIV infection in Nigeria would send a positive message across the world.
Responding, the vice president, said the Buhari administration will put in place effective primary healthcare centers across the country, even as it is collaborating with international agencies to end HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country to enhance access to healthcare.
According to the Vice President, access to healthcare is “a poverty issue, we must put it in that perspective.”
He explained that it was for the same reasons that the Buhari administration put the “half a trillion Naira in the 2016 budget, the largest single budgetary item of any government ever on social investments programmes,” that addresses poverty.
A statement from the media office of the Vice President said Osinbajo was referring to the six social investment plans of the Buhari presidency which are:
*Creation of 500,000 teaching jobs for unemployed graduates
*370,000 youths to be taken through vocational training and skills acquisition and would be paid while doing so
*Conditional Cash Transfer programme where one million extremely poor Nigerians would be paid N5000 per month in 2016
*Homegrown School Feeding programme where the federal government provides one-meal-a-day to primary school pupils across the country
*Free Education for tertiary education students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
*A one-time N60,000 loan to market women, artisans and traders through a Micro Credit scheme using the Bank of Industry.
Quoting the Vice President, the statement said all the programmes had been provided for in the 2016 budget and they were means of reducing poverty and vulnerabilities.
Osinbajo stated that access to treatment by patients of HIV/AIDS as in other diseases was an equality issue “because the vast majority of people who need help are those who can’t afford it,” the statement noted.
He said the federal government would ramp up funding for healthcare in the country and work with the UN to eliminate Mother-to-Child transmission of HIV/AIDS, expanding treatment for patients and spurring local manufacture of the Anti retroviral drugs, the three major issues the UNAIDS director tabled before him at the meeting, according to the statement.