The Director-General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS, Gambo Aliyu, yesterday said Nigeria spent $6.2bn (equivalent N2.36 trillion) to identify and treat 70 percent of the estimated 1,080,000 persons living with HIV last year.
Speaking in Abuja during the commemoration of this year’s World AIDS Day with the theme ‘Global Solidarity, Shared Responsibility’, he said $1.2bn of the money was from domestic sources.
Aliyu said 44,830 Nigerians were estimated to have died from HIV/AIDS in 2019.
He said HIV prevalence in the last 18 years had reduced from a peak of 5.8% in 2001 to 1.3% in 2018. According to him, this implies that 13 out of 1,000 persons selected randomly in Nigeria are now likely to be positive.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, urged drug manufacturers in Nigeria to increase efforts towards production of anti-retroviral drugs and HIV test kits.