Nigeria Spends N2.3trn On HIV Patients’ Treatment

• HIV Patients Tereatment

The Federal Government spent a total of $6.2bn (equivalent N2.38trn) between 2005 and 2018 to identify and treat 1,080,000 persons living with HIV/AIDS in the country, representing 60 percent of the estimated persons living with the virus.

The Director-General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS, Gambo Aliyu, said over $5bn of the amount came from international donors.

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He spoke at a press conference in Abujaon Tuesday while presenting the 2020 Quarterly HIV Factsheet (Volume 1).

He said the government needed to invest another $2.4bn to identify and treat additional 540,000 persons living with HIV/AIDS to meet up with UNAIDS target for epidemic control in the next three years.

Gambo said N75bn was needed to put over 1.5m infected persons on treatment for live.

“An estimated 1.8m people are currently living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria and nationally, 13 out of every 1,000 persons selected at random are likely to test positive to HIV.

“The estimated number of annual new infections (2019) is 103,404, while estimated number of annual death (2019) is 44,880,” he said.

Source: Daily Trust