The Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS, Dr. Temitope Ilori, stated that Nigeria has the highest number of children born with HIV/AIDS globally.
During her visit to the Oyo State Ministry of Health, the Oyo State Agency for the Control of AIDS, and the University College Hospital in Ibadan on Monday, Dr. Ilori emphasized that the agency is committed to ending the AIDS epidemic by 2030. She highlighted the need for collective efforts to achieve this goal.
“In the area of prevention of Mother-to-child Transmission of HIV, it’s unfortunate that Nigeria still has the highest burden of children born with HIV/AIDS, and therefore, this is a key priority area where we want to work assiduously to ensure that our mothers, our women, are educated and informed that they should visit health centres.
“When they’re pregnant, they should book in health centres where they have trained personnel to take the delivery because most of the transmission takes place perinatally.
“So, we are going to increase our advocacy, increase our sensitisation, increase our awareness on this to ensure that women seek help, book in the centres, and they have skilled birth attendants, and they have access to medication, because if they have access to medications, they will have a low viral load, or they will be virally suppressed, and will eliminate transmission to their unborn children.
“I’m happy that you are already engaging the traditional birth attendants at the state level because they play a major role. So, we’re going to reach out not only to the health workers, but even also to our mission homes, our religious leaders, our traditional leaders, and the birth attendants.”
Dr Ilori urged Nigerians to work towards to come on board to stem the tide of HIV and meet the target of ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030.
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