Nigeria opens 41 new AIDS treatment centers

LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigeria has opened 41 new AIDS treatment
centers to give wider access to free anti-retroviral therapy
for people who are HIV positive, the government’s anti-AIDS
agency said on Tuesday.

About 3.5 million people are living with the deadly virus
in Africa’s most populous country of around 140 million people,
the third-highest number after India and South Africa.

Nigeria started giving out free anti-retroviral drugs
(AVRs) in January from 33 treatment centers to about 40,000
patients, scrapping a 1,000 naira ($8) subsidy that patients
previously had to pay every month.

“We have added new treatment centers, bringing the total
number to 74,” Babatunde Osotimehin, chairman of the National
Action Committee on AIDS (NACA), told Reuters. The centers are
spread across Nigeria’s 36 states and the capital Abuja.

“We plan to set up more centers over the next few months to
bring treatment as close to the people as we can,” he added.

Two-thirds of Nigerians live on less than a dollar a day
and campaigners say many HIV-positive people are too poor to
pay for the life-saving drugs which cost between 3,000 to 7,000
naira per month on the open market.

Medecins Sans Frontier, which campaigns for wider access to
free AIDS treatment in Nigeria, lauded the new program, but
said many patients still cannot pay for a series of monthly
medical tests for AVRs to be correctly administered. Many more
cannot afford treatment of opportunistic infections.

NACA plans to expand the anti-retroviral therapy to 250,000
patients by year-end, with funding from the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the United States
government and other major donors, and savings from the debt
write-off granted Nigeria in 2005 by the Paris Club.

Osotimehin said the government is also studying ways to
subsidize the battery of medical tests while treatment for
tuberculosis, one of the most common illnesses among AIDS
patients, was already free in Nigeria.

He said full HIV/AIDS care including tests was free for
children and pregnant women — a key part of efforts to prevent
the transmission of the virus from mother to child.

($ = 127.5 naira)