Over 200,000 persons with HIV incur huge treatment cost – Report

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By Moses Emorinken, Abuja

The latest Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) Report by the Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria (NEPWHAN) has revealed that 11.2 percent (212,800) of people living with HIV (PLHIV) still incur huge out-of-pocket costs for treatment.

According to the UNAIDS report of 2018, an estimated 1.9 million people in Nigeria are living with HIV.

The CLM report, which collected data between September to December 2020, and was supported by the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) and the UNAIDS, further revealed that the two major barriers to HIV service accessibility are – a distance of health facilities and out of pocket expenses. 20.2 percent of PLHIV do not have treatment centres close to where they live.

Other barriers identified were – side effects of HIV treatment, drug breaks, lack of confidentiality at site level, user fees for processing payments, waiting for time to be attended to, stigmatization and discrimination, etc.

It also noted that covid-19 has made access to care providers more challenging for clients.

Speaking on Wednesday in Abuja, during the PLHIV community engagement and official launch of the Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) Report and Framework, the Director-General of the NACA, Dr Gambo Aliyu, stated that the CLM Framework will serve as a guide in the implementation of the CLM initiative in Nigeria, by always putting the community first and allowing the community to take charge.

“The 2016 United Nations political declaration on Ending AIDS affirmed the critical roles of communities. Member states recognised that to meet the fast track targets, community responses to HIV must be scaled up and committed to at least 30 percent of services being community-led by 2030.

“The CLM framework is key to ensuring availability, access to, and the delivery of quality HIV care and services. It also empowers clients and communities to seek information, increases health literacy, expands engagement with health service delivery, addresses human rights violation, stigma and discrimination, supports demand creation, and demand accountability from the health system in order to improve in the delivery of HIV services.

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“With that advent of covid-19, the Presidential Task Force developed a national covid-19 multi-sectoral pandemic response plan. In response, and as part of its contributions towards curtailing the pandemic, the UN system in Nigeria also developed the One UN covid-19 response plan that is also structured around the government plan.

“It further established the One UN Basket Fund for covid-19 in Nigeria through which the community-led monitoring of covid-19 and HIV is being financed.

“NEPWHAN, being the patient community, was rightly selected after necessary organizational checks and processes to implement the maiden CLM initiative in Nigeria,” he said.

In his remarks, the National Coordinator of NEPWHAN, Abdulkadir Ibrahim, said: “Through routine and scheduled monitoring of access and quality of HIV and COVID-19 services by members of the community, NEPWHAN believes that service barriers and bottlenecks will not only be identified, but appropriate solutions would be found.

“Informed by the Nigeria HIV/AIDS Indicator and Impact Survey (NAIIS 2018 report) and the revised National HIV and AIDS Strategic Framework, NEPWHAN identified the need to develop a 5-year Strategic Plan informed by current evidence and realities.”

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