HIV/AIDS: FG Plans N8bn Intervention

Emmanuel Ugwu, The implementation of the presidential intervention in the funding of the HIV/AIDS programmes is set to commence next month as fine-tuning of logistics has reached advanced stage in the two pilot states of Abia and Taraba selected for the campaign.

Already, the federal government has earmarked N8 billion funding through the Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P), which would drive the implementation of the campaign in partnership with the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA).

At a stakeholders meeting in Umuahia to firm up the “implementation architecture”, the project director of NACA/SURE-P intervention, Dr Sabastine Wakdok told journalists that all was set for the implementation of the programme in Abia with effect from March 30.

He explained that the intervention was necessitated by a partnership framework agreement signed in 2010 between the Nigerian government and the United States government on the funding of HIV/AIDS intervention programmes.

The agreement entailed that by 2015 Nigeria would be providing 50 per cent of the funding while the other half would come from the development partners, which hitherto had been providing between 80 and 90 per cent of the funding.

Dr Wakdok said that the increase in Nigeria’s contribution to the HIV/AIDS intervention programme was because the development partners have decided to tilt their resources to other areas hence Nigeria would have to take ownership of its 50 per cent funding.

Nigeria is expected to take ownership in terms of funding, providing commodities, advocacy, support, production of anti-retroviral drugs (ARD), among others.

The NACA/SURE-P project director said that the first phase of the PCRP was expected to last for two years with a target of providing ARD for 15, 000 adults and children in Abia and Taraba states while five million people are expected to be covered in the country as a whole. “We are still winning the war but still a tall order. We have to put in more concerted efforts, not just at federal but at state level, the private sector and also international partners to drive down the epidemic,” Wakdok said.

He explained that the development partners were not withdrawing their support but merely “flattening their budget as what they are trying to do now is to relocate their resources to more strategic areas” while the government of Nigeria takes the driving seat in the HIV/ AIDS programme.

Dr Wakdok further stated that after the first phase the second phase would be the sustainability phase whereby the federal government would not necessarily be in charge but the state governments would have been able to stand on their own to carry on with the programme.

Abia State commissioner for health, Dr Okechukwu Ogah told THISDAY that the state was ready to take ownership of the HIV/AIDS programme by the time the responsibility for the sustainability of the programme would fall on the states.

He said that Abia “is already preparing the ground” and would have provided enough resources by the time states would take full responsibility in HIV/AIDS response programmes, adding that the state would always make appropriate budgetary provisions to tackle the epidemic and called for private sector involvement in the funding of HIV/AIDS response programmes.

The project manager/executive secretary of the Abia State Agency for the Control of AIDS (SACA), Dr Sam Ohaeri, said there would be no cause for alarm on the issue of funding when eventually the donor agencies channel their money to other strategic areas. “They have taught us how to fish and now we can start fishing on our own,” he said.