The National Agency for Control of AIDS (NACA), says the North Central region in Nigeria has the highest number of recorded cases of HIV in the country.
NACA chief program officer, Tajudeen Arowolo, said this at the opening of a four day long medical outreach initiative organised by the agency in Ilorin, Kwara state, yesterday.
“This is because of the high cases recorded in Benue, Plateau and Nasarawa states as well as the Federal Capital Territory. However, out of the states in North Central, Kwara has the lowest rate of HIV cases and one of the lowest in the entire country,” Arowolo said.
He said NACA had opened similar free medical clinics across the country and that it had screened, tested and given results to 4,441 out of the 5,000 targeted people.
He said out of the 4,441 people that were tested, only 19 tested positive for the virus.
Arowolo said they were immediately referred to medical facilities near to their homes for them to receive treatment.
He said there had been a remarkable decrease in HIV cases in Nigeria as a result of NACA’s regular outreach programs.
According to him, the NACA’s constant awareness campaign has helped to control the spread of the disease in the country.
Arowolo attributed the success of the outreach to the strategies adopted by NACA, one of which he said was the inclusion of free medical treatment for other illnesses like malaria, coughing, and diabetes.
He also said all nursing or pregnant women that came for the test and treatment would be given free mosquito nets treated with insecticide.
Arowolo added that 5,000 people are expected to come forward for free testing and medical treatment in Ilorin alone in the near future.
The HIV/AIDS infection rate in Nigeria is 3.2%. This is much smaller than in many other sub-African countries, for example, the infection rate in South Africa is 19.1%, and 6.2% in Kenya.
However, given Nigeria’s population of nearly 180 million, this means that around 3.5 million people in Nigeria have HIV/AIDS, with 200,000 new cases recorded every year.
