The Federal Government has picked holes in the continued poor ratings of the HIV intervention programme in Nigeria by foreign evaluators, insisting that Nigeria had fared well in its response irrespective of any other country’s progress.
The Minister of State for Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire said this at the occasion of the dissemination of the National Guidelines for HIV Prevention, Treatment and Care in Abuja.
The Minister who pointed out that HIV response has since brought about good number of Stakeholders and Professionals working assiduously to ensure the disease is being curbed, maintained that the premise under which the evaluations are being carried out never seem to correlate with reality.
He said, “I completely reject the premise by which these people evaluate our program because there are hardly few correlations with reality and the more they push their figures before our face, the more one feels the sense that our HIV problem is largely an M and E one.
“I remain unconvinced that 860, 000 patients on ART in 1000 comprehensive HIV treatment centres translates to failure and it is difficult to discountenance the unprecedented decline in morbidity and mortality associated with HIV/AIDS.
“I simply cannot accept that our collective hard work against HIV/AIDS in Nigeria is wasted effort.”
Ehanire however agreed that there could be better ways in tackling the disease adding that the newly disseminated National Guidelines for HIV treatment will partly help achieve the United Nations 90-90-90 target if implemented.
“From this day hence, every one who tests positive to HIV is automatically eligible for treatment and this applies to every one with equal emphasis, child, man and woman, pregnant or not”, he said.
