The National Agency for the Control of Aids has said Nigeria contributes the largest number of babies born with HIV in the world. The Director General of NACA, Sani Aliyu in an exclusive interview with Premiumtimes said some of the challenges facing the country in the health sector were responsible for the development.
He expressed optimism that with the appointment of the Wife of the President, Aisha Buhari as the Special Ambassador on Prevention of Mother to Child transmission by UNAIDS, the situation would enjoy more government attention going forward. According to him
"In Nigeria, we have a challenge with prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV. Other countries are doing well, like in Cuba, it has been eliminated. Belarus, not a problem, in Australia, it is no longer considered a public health emergency. In the UK, and in my almost 20 years of working in HIV field, I have not had a single patient who had a child born with HIV. We are having issues with Nigeria, partly because of the culture we approach ante-natal care and partly because of ignorance as well, especially among our pregnant mothers and lack of awareness.
"For instance, we know a large number of our women do not access ante natal care the normal way. If you look at our data for prevention of mother to child transmission, provided a pregnant mother goes to a facility for ante-natal care, nine out of 10 times is very likely to get a HIV test done. But when we have 45-55 percent of pregnant women not accessing facility care, maybe going to Traditional Birth Attendant or going to places of worship to deliver, then access to those mothers becomes really difficult.
"What NACA has been doing is looking for a way of chasing those mothers and getting them to have an HIV test done and linking them up with treatment. That is the only way we can address prevention of mother to child transmission. We have to work outside the normal arrangement that the rest of the world had and we also need to integrate prevention of mother to child transmission into other maternal and child health services. We should not treat HIV as a separate issue in health care, it needs to be a holistic care. I am so delighted that the Saving One Million Lives has a component of prevention of mother to child transmission within it.
"At the last meeting, which was chaired by the minister, directives were given that the Saving One Million Lives programme should invest in procuring test kits for testing pregnant mothers of HIV. We are also doing more work when it comes to maternal and child health week. Our aim is that for the two maternal health week that takes place every year, it provides us an opportunity to test all pregnant women within that period.
"Hopefully, we will pick up those women that need to go on HIV treatment because if you have HIV and you are pregnant and you deliver and you are on treatment and virological suppressed, there is less than one per cent chance that you will transmit the virus to your baby. But if you are pregnant with HIV and you do not do anything about it and you deliver, 3 to 4 out of 10 babies will get infected.
"Nigeria contributes the largest number of babies born with HIV in the world. It is a burden, a sore on the nation’s conscience and something that has to stop. The wife of the president, Aisha Buhari, has just been appointed by UNAIDS as a special ambassador on prevention of mother to child transmission and at that level, we hope to really key in and address this problem once and for all. It is a problem that can be solved. No Nigerian child should be born with HIV it is not right, we have the resources and the ability to stop it and we should not allow it to continue."
