NAN-F-4
Funding
By Akeem Abas
Paris, July 22, 2017 (NAN) A Professor of Medicine, Linda-Gail Bekker, has called on the global community to remain committed to funding HIV programmes in order to achieve the 90-90-90 objective aimed at saving lives.
Bekker made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Paris on Friday after a facility tour of the Institut Pasteur, a sophisticated laboratory located in the city centre.
NAN reports that Bekker, the President of the International AIDS Society(IAS), was in Paris, France, for the 9th IAS Conference on HIV Science scheduled to hold from Sunday to Wednesday at the Palais Des Congres.
She said that lack of adequate funding had continue to pose a great threat to the targeted 90-90-90 objectives on HIV treatment.
Bekker stated that 90-90-90 program on HIV is aimed at diagnosing 90 percent of HIV-infected persons worldwide, linking 90 percent of identified cases to Anti-Retroviral Therapy(ART) and achieving virologic suppression among 90 percent ART beneficiaries.
“Most recently, some governments have said they are no more releasing money into the global fund.
“ That poses a great deal of fear for us in our programming, particularly in our initiatives for African countries.
“We are already half way in treating those infected. If money is taken away from programming, the treatment ongoing and services on ground would go away.
“ If research goes down, there will be less innovation. And with this, we won’t be in the position to handle prevention any longer,’’ she said.
Bekker stated that the study in Nigeria revealed that the rate of transmission from mother to child was still high.
She said these were really fundamental issues that required to be sorted out in some countries across Sub-Sahara Africa.
“We know that if you’ve got HIV, you should be treated and keeping all of these people on treatment is a very good thing to do anyway.
“So, we have gone a long way in the 90-90-90 campaign because it’s likely to save a lot of lives, ‘’ she said.
She stated that the programme was an economical way to increase survival of HIV-infected persons, reduce the number of children orphaned by the disease and contain the global epidemic.
Bekker said that the 9th IAS HIV Science Conference holding in Paris was significant because it avails the opportunity to highlight the challenges on the field and in the world of HIV.
NAN reports that Bekker is also the Deputy Director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Centre at the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, South Africa.
She is a physician scientist with a keen interest in HIV, tuberculosis and related diseases.
Her doctoral work focused on the host response to tuberculosis both with and in the absence of HIV co-infection.
Bekker’s research interests had expanded to include programmatic and action research around antiretroviral roll out and TB integration as well as prevention of HIV in women, youth and men who have sex with men.
NAN recalls that Dr Sani Aliyu, the Director-General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), had said that Nigeria must take full sponsorship of its HIV/AIDS programme or risk losing one million of its citizens currently living with the disease before 2022.
Aliyu had on July 9 told newsmen in Abuja that taking ownership of the programme by Nigeria was important in view of the dwindling resources coming from foreign donors.
“At the moment, almost one million Nigerians are on HIV treatment with only about 60,000 of them being catered for by the Federal Government through the Taraba and Abia project.
“About 700,000 HIV positive Nigerians were catered for by the US government while the remaining 240,000 people were being treated through funds donated by other global organisations,’’ he had said.
He warned that the stoppage of funding by donors on HIV/AIDs programme would place almost a million Nigerians off the treatment.
“I can tell you as a physician that if those one million people are out of treatment statistically most of them will be dead in the next five years.
“This is a national security issue. HIV treatment is now affordable and we as a country need to start taking ownership of the programme,“ he said.(NAN)
TAA/OJO
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(Edited by Mufutau Ojo)