Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants (CURE-Nigeria) has called on the Federal Ministry of Health to include prisons and other detention centres in Nigeria in its planned survey on HIV and AIDS, Hepatitis B and C.
CURE-Nigeria, a justice reforms and human rights organisation (NGO) made the call in a statement signed by its Executive Director, Mr Sylvester Uhaa, made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja.
The NGO also called on National Agency for the control of AIDs (NACA) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to carry the prisons along in the planned survey.
“We are deeply concerned over the seeming exclusion of people in prison and other detention centres across the country from the survey.
“As you may be aware, the few available data on HIV and AIDs and Hepatitis B and C in prisons in Nigeria and other developing countries, show that the prisons and other detention facilities have become the breeding grounds for HIV and AIDS, Hepatitis B and C.
“This is due to lack of access to drugs, prevention and treatment, high risk behaviours, overcrowding, unprotected sex, lack of access to condoms, lack of access to drugs, prevention and treatment, among others,” Uhaa said.
Uhaa said that effort to fight the spread of HIV and AIDS, Hepatitis B and C in Nigeria and across the world might not succeed if the people in prison and other detention facilities were excluded from the exercise.
The executive director cited Mr Friday Etakor, an awaiting trial inmate, who died in Benin prison in 2008 from HIV and AIDS due to lack of access to anti-retroviral drugs, and called on the government to do the needful to prevent such unnecessary deaths.
Uhaa said it was possible that 32 persons who died in a prison in Lagos could have died of HIV and AIDS, Hepatitis B and C or other related illnesses or complication arising from HIV and AIDS and Hepatitis.
“We cannot continue to leave the over 70, 000 people in our prisons and the large number of people in police cells and other detention facilities out of our developmental, health, educational, social and economic programme and expect to get things right.
“So, we write to request the ministry and NACA to include the prisons and other detention centres across the country in the survey.
“Doing so will not only help your effort to stem the spread of these diseases both in the prisons and in the general population, but also give people in prison access to drugs and care and reduce death in prisons and other detention facilities across Nigeria,” he said.
Uhaa, who commended the ministry and the relevant agencies for initiating the move, urged them to take the call seriously by including people in the detention facilities in the survey. (NAN)