NACA to adopt health insurance for national HIV/AIDS response

Dr Sani Aliyu, Director-General, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), says the agency will adopt health insurance plans as a major innovative solution to sustain the National HIV/AIDS Response Programme.

The director-general disclosed this at the third National Council on AIDS meeting on Tuesday in Abuja.

Aliyu said that the current HIV funding in Nigeria was not sustainable because it was primarily dependent on international funding.

He urged state governments to start taking a leading role and increase the funding of the programme.

He said without the involvement of state governments, it would be difficult to control the scourge and move forward, stressing that “we need to take our destiny into our hands’’.

According to Aliyu, the agency is trying to build the sustainability plan through the innovative solutions such as the health insurance plans, and getting additional revenue from private sector.

“We know how much it cost to provide service to patients in the country; one of our main aim is to reduce the cost of treatment to enable the states start paying for the services,’’ he said.

The director-general assured that the agency would diagnose as many people as possible and put those found to be positive on treatment.

He said establishing the actual prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria was crucial, adding that NACA is already working with partners to establish accurate data of the prevalence in Nigeria.

However, he noted that there are problems with electronic medical records and manual entry of HIV results, adding that the data we present sometimes does not match accurately.

He said that the agency would pursue a new approach that is robust and acceptable to all.

“We will increase the uptake of prevention of mother to child transmission services, by now we are not expected to be talking about the prevention but elimination of mother to child transmission now,’’ he said.

Representative of the United Nations, Dr Bilali Camara, Country Director of UNAIDS, said the meeting came at a time when President Buhari launched a Fast Tracking HIV/AIDS Plan for 2017/2018.

He said that the plan aims at putting Nigeria back on track for the 90-90-90 target and the elimination of Mother-to-Child transmission of HIV in Nigeria by 2020.

Camara added that the targets of this plan are to put half million more people living with HIV on treatment.

He added that it will also test three million more pregnant women and treat for life 75,000 to be found HIV positive and their 435 HIV positive children.

He however, said these objectives are not beyond the reach of Nigeria when the country chose the right strategies.

He added that Nigeria need to integrate her HIV interventions into existing healthcare services and embrace the primary health care approach to AIDS response.

He said taking HIV interventions to PHCs would bring the integrated health services closer to the people who need them the most at the local government level.