By Cecilia Ogezi
Conversations have been opened for the localisation agenda of Human Immunodeficiency Virus(HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency syndrome( AIDS) funding to own the response and enable the country achieve global target for HIV and related diseases like Tuberclosis and Malaria in Nigeria.
Owing to the fact that the achievements towards ending the epidemic in Nigeria is donor driven, the Civil Society has argued the need to look inward to meet global target to end HIV in 2030.
Major concerns have been that commodities, tools used to sustaining response are not local but all imported. These also includes medication, test kits and condoms which are all manufactured outside the country. With a demand for stakeholders and government to push advocacy for oral prep/prep ring and the injectables.
Civil Society Accountability Forum ( CSOAF) has recently, during their annual conference, advocated for domestic funding of HIV/AIDS programs as a way of owning the response of achieving low prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Nigeria. The virtual conference theme: "Effective Partnership For Sustainable Health Financing In Nigeria" is apt as it points out the importance of funding to curb the HIV epidemic.
The Forum is a platform through which the collective body of CSOs working on HIV related issues in Nigeria annually review the progress made with HIV treatment, prevention, care and support response to identify gaps and way forward.
According to the executive director of The New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society (NHVMAS) Nigeria,Florita Durueke the pravalence rate for women between the ages of 14-24 is high, noting that young people find it hard to access funds. She pointed out that one of the pre-conference agendas was advocacy for funding from government and donors to work with young people.
NHVMAS revealed this at a webinar training series for Female journalists organised by The New HIV Vaccine and Microbicide Advocacy Society (NHVMAS), Nigeria.
The advocacy agenda to push for adolescent friendly services in the primary health care centres through basic health care funds,policy reforms to allow these funds to be channel towards these areas. This also is in line with the Global HIV Strategy which says 30 percent of HIV programs must be community laid. To include 30 percent youths or women in their agenda while working on programs that concern them.
She explained that among issues raised include the key populations on target, men who have sex with men, commercial sex workers and people who inject drugs.
Another key advocacy agenda in the pre-conference was for People Living With HIV( PLHIV) group, who were pushing for the regulatory approval and government adoption of the use of the long acting injectable cabotegravir in Nigeria, which can also be used as preventive drug.
"Amongst other things added was for the low literacy level of patients to be addressed as many have little knowledge or understanding of reaction of their medication.
Major area to look at facilitating the task at hand was remuneration for workers and volunteers, advocacy was for community workers to be integrated into HIV programs for them to have better remuneration.
Key agendas of the main conference was for the localisation agenda of HIV, Tuberclosis and Malaria response in Nigeria in ensuring that Nigeria is on track to ending AIDS by 2030 in Nigeria and the human rights approach to HIV, TB and Malaria response in Nigeria", she said.
The indicators to meeting the target is 95/95/95 percentage ruler. This states critically that 95 percent of people living with HIV will know their status, another 95 percent of people who know their statuses will be placed on treatment with the last 95 percent attaining viral suppression.
These indices are the yardstick to measure countries on track and even though Nigeria is in the clear, attention has however been drawn to how all this is dependent on donor support and how we can hit regression when support is withdraw.
The localisation agenda for HIV is looking beyond global funders and building local capacity to enable Nigeria to own the response by reducing dependency on foreign aids as records show that the Nigerian government funds less than 15 percent of HIV over all funding leaving the bulk of it's funding to international donors.
She pointed out that one of the issues raised included the Nigerian government creating enabling environment for donor funding as there were growing concerns of lack of government support for the forum despite being in existence in 2016, they however called government partnership and participate to move agenda forward.
It's was also revealed that FHI360 a US based organisation and principal recipient for global fund and major funder of HIV programs in Nigeria, as local organisations have been said not to have the capacity to control billion dollar projects.
There was also a call for capacity building for local organisation to manage programs just as they pointed out the need for human right approach to HIV to address stigma and descrimination, and violence against sex workers. NNL.