President Muhammadu Buhari has launched a ₦62.1 billion fund to improve efforts towards sustaining Nigeria’s Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) response, addressing killer diseases and public health emergencies.
President Buhari during the launching of the trust fund at an event on Tuesday said he was hopeful that the private sector-led initiative will surpass the ₦62billion target in the next five years, in order to adequately provide requisite treatment for HIV-positive mothers while contributing to closing the funding gap for HIV in Nigeria.
The private sector-led funding for the HIV Trust fund of Nigeria is expected to crystalise a sustainable financial mechanism for the mobilisation and deployment of domestic private sector resources, particularly aimed at preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV in the country.
Winnie Byanyima, the Executive Director of Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said that a total of 1.7 million Nigerians are living with HIV, while 1.6 million of that figure are on treatment.
Byanyima further noted that there is an urgent need to scale up domestic funding as Nigeria leads with the highest number of HIV infections among children.
She said although the COVID-19 has pushed back intervention on the pandemic, ending AIDS is not just a moral but an economic imperative.
