‘67,763 HIV Positive Persons Receiving Care In Lagos’

LAGOS State Government (LASG) yesterday said about 67, 763 persons are currently on Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) treatment care in the state as against the 64, 000 it had as at June last year. The state Commissioner for Health, Jide Idris who revealed this at the ongoing ministerial briefing in Lagos State, said its Malaria, HIV and Tuberculosis programmes have been very effective and 64,000 doses of oral antimalarial and 10,000 doses of injectable Artesunate were procured and distributed across the state.

‘’The program had been able to counsel, test and give results to 1,125,939 persons. The State has been able to scale up Provider-initiated Testing and Counseling (PITC), Option B+ for preg- nant women and test and start strategies in government tertiary, secondary and primary health facilities.’’

The commissioner added that the state has been able to scale up Anti Retro Viral Therapy from 44 sites to 65 sites, adding that they also upgraded 10 per cent of its Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) sites with optimization of services from Option B to Option B+.

He explained that Lagos became in 2017, the first SubNational Government in all countries in the world to be appointed as a Principal Recipient by the Global Fund towards the implementation of comprehensive HIV Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support program across 70 health facilities in the 3 LGAS of Epe, Ikorodu and Oshodi/isolo.