67, 763 PERSONS INFECTED WITH HIV IN LAGOS -LASG

IKEJA, Nigeria – The Lagos state government has 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 of June last year. The state Commissioner for Health Dr. Jide Idris, who revealed this at the on-going ministerial briefing in Lagos state, said its Malaria, HIV and Tuberculosis programmes have been very effective. Idris said 64,000 doses of oral anti-malarial and 10,000 doses of injectable Artesunate were procured and distributed across the state in the last one year.

‘’The programme has been able to place and retain 67,763 HIV positive persons on treatment care and support across the state out of which 1,989 persons are on treatment in three Global Fund supported LGAs (Ikorodu, Oshodi-Isolo and Epe), as at December 2017. The above achievement has earned the state GF supported HIV Control programme an extension period of implementation of 18 months.

‘’The programme 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 pregnant women and test and start strategies in government tertiary, secondary and primary health facilities,’’ he said.

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 optimisation of services from Option B to Option B+.

He explained that Lagos became in 2017, the first sub-national 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.

According to him, ‘’the key objectives of the grant are to, among others, reduce new HIV infections, and improve the quality of life for the infected, affected, and to place 10,337 number of PLHIVs on treatment of which 3,876 are children.

‘’Provide people living in Epe, Ikorodu and OshodI Isolo LGAs with universal access to high-quality, patient-centered prevention, diagnosis, and treatment services for TB/HIV by 2017. Contribute towards achieving HIV epidemic control in Epe, Ikorodu and Oshodi/Isolo LGAs by year the 2020 with epidemic control defined as ART coverage of at least 80 per cent,” he said.