The federal government has been urged to seek an alternative and sustainable funding for HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.
A group of stakeholders on HIV/AIDS made this call at a meeting of the National Council On Aids in Abuja to discuss sustainable financing options for HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.
The group asserted that the current funding is not sustainable since a large chunk, about 70% of the national funding for HIV/AIDS are from foreign donors.
According to the 2008 report of the United Nations Program On HIV/AIDS, 3.1% of people between the age of 15 and 49 were living with HIV/AIDS as at 2007.
That prevalence rate led to the formation of the National Council On Aids in 2007 to mobilize states resources against the ravaging effects of the HIV pandemic.
Ten years after, members of the National Agency for the Control of Aids say the current funding mechanism with government contributing less than 30% of total funding is no longer sustainable.
“The current HIV funding in Nigeria is not sustainable. It is driven primarily by international donors. We need to take our destinies in our hands,”Dr. Sani Aliyu, the Director General of the National Agency for the Control of Aids (NACA) said.
Mr. Victor Omoshehin, the National Coordinator of the Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS also appealed to the council to consider a national trust fund for HIV/AIDS intervention.
“One way forward for us to own our destiny and take charge is for us to have a national aids trust fund that can be able to take charge of domestic resources. “We need not wait for statutory allocation every year, we need not wait for the donors to come and help us all the time,” he said.
There are currently about 3.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria with an annual death rate of 180,000. Experts believe the situation could get worse if a sustainable financing mechanism is not devised in the face of dwindling donor funding.
