More financial commitment from government at all levels has been described as one of the ways to reduce the burden of HIV/Aids currently put at 3.6 million.
While government has continued to depend on donor agencies for over eighty percent of financial support, two point five million children have become orphans and over one million persons infected with the virus are unable to access anti-retroviral drugs.
The National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA) revealed that 220,000 people died in 2009 and 290,000 died in 2010, thus putting life expectancy in Nigeria at 52.
NACA further says “out of over 160 million Nigerians, 3.1 million are infected with the virus”.
The HIV/Aids prevalence rate stands at 4.1 per cent and an estimated 1000 new HIV infections occur daily.
Most of the investment on HIV/ Aids in Nigeria comes from international sources. As of 2008, only 7.6 percent of investment was domestic public expenditure, with majority of the funding coming from development partners.
NACA says about N700 billion is required to fund the National Strategic Framework 2010 to 2015.
Nigeria lies second in the global HIV/Aids burden. This calls for urgent and drastic action from government if this trend must be reversed.
Nigeria is among 12 countries in the world that have recorded a decline in the new Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) infection rate.
