As many as 58,000 babies are born HIV positive annually in Nigeria, a United Nations envoy has revealed.
Michel Sidibe, the Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, said this on Monday while on a courtesy call on the Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS, Professor John Idoko, in Abuja.
He said it was necessary to increase testing and treatment to a larger portion of the population if the war against the disease is to be won in the country.
Sidibe stated: “If there is any one country where I should be today to be able to talk about ending this epidemic, it should be Nigeria, because if we fail to control the epidemic, it will be disastrous. If we fail to quicken the pace and reach people, we may not be able to end the epidemic
“We are in a defining moment, Nigeria has been able to demonstrate that result is possible, that we can see decline on new infections, that we can see decline on the number of persons who are dying from HIV/AIDS, that we can increase the number of people on treatment.
“If we do not demonstrate that we are capable of achieving mother to child transmission at all levels of government and at every single place, it will be difficult. From data in our books, 58, 000 babies are born with HIV/AIDS every year in Nigeria.
“We need to be able to make sure that we don’t have those babies born with HIV. We need to make sure that we have a new generation born without HIV. With that you would have been able to demonstrate, like I just said, at all government levels.”
He called on President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that there are no babies dying of HIV/AIDS at the end of his tenure, just as he said babies infected with the virus had a 50 percent chance of survival if not placed on immediate treatment at birth.