Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is not usually considered a model country in the fight against AIDS. The statistics are devastating – around 3 million of Nigeria’s 140 million people are currently living with the deadly disease. The country currently has the third highest number of HIV/AIDS infections after India and South Africa. Nigeria’s plan for controlling the spread of AIDS initially involved building new treatment centers to provide free drug therapy for around 250,000 people by the end of 2006. However, after failing to meet targets, major donors were skeptical about the way in which their funding was being spent.

The Nigerian AIDS control agency announced today that the momentum has recently started to pick up: the number of HIV/AIDS patients receiving treatment in Nigeria has tripled over the last year. An increase in treatment centers, from 74 to 210, has enabled 135,000 people (95,000 more than the previous year) to receive treatment. However, recent estimates indicate that only 10 percent of Nigerian HIV sufferers have been receiving treatment. ActionAid has previously deemed Nigeria as being high in the “AIDS league of shame”. Hopefully they will continue their progression, and become a model of success rather than a permanent fixture in the “league of shame”.

-Elizabeth Gregg, ONE Government Affairs & Policy Intern

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Nigeria, HIV/AIDS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.