States urged to develop roadmaps for sustainable HIV progs
The Director-General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Dr Sani Aliyu has enjoined states to develop roadmaps for sustainable funding of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria programmes in their states.
He made the call during the national dialogue on HIV, tuberculosis malaria and Resilient Systems for Sustainable Health (RSSH) Grant Application 2018-2020 in Abuja.
Represented by Dozie Ezechukwu of the agency, Aliyu said the sustainability roadmap should include innovative approaches for resourcing and ownership.
He said states should take ownership of their HIV response now because about 75% of the 1,000 Antiretroviral therapy (ART) sites were secondary health facilities under the control of the states, and that it would help reduce unit cost for delivering ART.
He added that the decentralization of ART from tertiary and secondary levels of care to primary healthcare level also empowered states to take ownership of health sector response.
“New Global Fund grant implementation architecture seeks to empower states to manage their grants as either Principal Recipient or SubRecipient. States should take advantage of this opportunity,” he said.
Stakeholders at the dialogue brain stormed on the progress made towards the new Global Fund grant application, shared findings of the HIV/ TB epidemiological and programmatic analysis, and came to a consensus on the priorities as well as strategic investment for funding requests to Global Fund.
The forum noted that Nigeria has the largest gap in terms of TB funding, and other gaps such as poor domestic funding and lack of adequate commitment by both federal and state governments, lack of adequate feedback from recipients, lack of unified efforts by different organs in the states, and the need for stakeholders to re-strategize in their efforts to boost domestic funding across the health sector.