ODAY is World AIDS
Day, a date set aside by the United Nations (UN) to keep the AIDS pandemic in
the consciousness of policy makers and all peoples of the world.
Since its official emergence in 1981, HIV/AIDS has claimed
millions of lives worldwide, and rendered millions of children orphans.
The UN Agency for International Development (UNAIDS)
estimates that there were 34.7 million adults and 2.1 million children living
with the virus at the end of last year, while 4.8 million people became infected
this year.
Sadly, in no other continent is this pandemic now said to be
more devastating than in Africa, which has lost millions of people to the
disease. The tragedy has not spared Nigeria. From a minor impact, the problem
attained threatening proportions, as prevalence rates soar above the 6 per cent
mark.
The indices are frightening. Current estimates place the
spread of HIV in the country at a fast rate. Worse the epidemic in Nigeria is
significantly advancing well beyond high risk groups particularly commercial sex
workers, military personnel and truckists into the general population, hitherto
considered safe from the infection.
Within the country, Cross River State has the highest number
of people living with the epidemic. The official statistics is that, 3.5 million
Nigerians aged 15-49 years are already HIV infected.
Factors, which have contributed to the rapid spread of HIV
infection, include high prevalence of untreated sexually transmitted infections
(STIs), low condom use, poverty, illiteracy, and dismal quality of the health
system.
Other concomitant factors include political complacency,
gender inequality, stigmatization and denial of HIV risk among the populace.
Sadly these dynamics have persisted in Nigeria and other developing countries
where poverty and poor governance have pushed the pandemic to unimaginable
frontiers.
It is for this reason that this year’s AIDS Day is very
significant as global health experts evolve new and practical strategies to
combat the disease.
With the theme; ‘Girls, women, HIV and AIDS’, the campaign
seeks more innovative approaches in tackling sexual violence against women.
Rape, economic, and socio-political discriminatory challenges confronting
females worldwide particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, make many women to be
subjected to despicable cultural practices, which make them vulnerable to the
virus as well as other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as gonorrhea,
syphilis and staphylococcus.
Despite the enormous resources committed to the scourge, HIV
has remained without cure or any effective anti-dote. This underscores the
increasing demand and clamour for a vaccine and other preventive strategies.
As a viral disease that hugely impairs the immune system of
the human body, AIDS leaves the victims open to assault from various fatal
infections including tuberculosis (TB), pneumonia, cholera, dysentery and
tumours. One third of people living with HIV/AIDS are co-infected with
tuberculosis while more than 19.1 per cent of people with TB are co-infected
with HIV.
Emerging findings from UN sources indicate that about 10 per
cent of all HIV infections worldwide are contracted from contaminated needles or
other injecting equipment, while about 22 per cent of the AIDS population are
said to be injection drug users. However sexual transmission remains the primary
mode of spread in Nigeria and other African countries.
Although earliest AIDS incidences in the Americas and Europe
were almost exclusively found among homosexual males, the patient population
globally, has since broadened to include intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs
and other persons who had received infected blood transfusion, heterosexuals
whose sexual partners were HIV positive as well as the offspring of such unions.
With the sporadic spread of the infection in the country,
there are fears that Nigeria may overtake South Africa on Africa’s AIDS chart.
This is most disturbing and requires urgent interventions.
We recognize that government has over the years enunciated a
number of programmes as part of efforts to combat the disease including the
establishment of a few centres for subsidized anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs in the
country. Also there are about 11 Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMCT)
centres in the country, while there are plans to scale them up to secondary
health facilities in each state. Other measures include plans to manufacture ARV
drugs locally in addition to setting up of 106 blood screening centres, the
training of about 2000 medical laboratory scientists and supply of specialized
equipment for HIV/AIDS treatment.
Unfortunately these measures are grossly insufficient in the
face of the enormous expansion of the rank of HIV carriers. Sadly the situation
is further fuelled by the internationally-driven sex trade involving Nigerian
girls and middle men in collaboration with foreign cartel.
Government will do well to evolve practical strategies that
will specifically target the youths, who constitute the sexually active group
and the most vulnerable, with prevalence among them as high as 12 per cent in
some states. In addition government must confront this problem also by
addressing all the underlying factors that have exacerbated the pandemic, among
this, of course, is poverty.
