To end HIV/AIDS, Nigeria must sustain the momentum

Today, the global community marks the annual World AIDS Day 2025. The theme of this year’s event is “Overcoming Disruption, Transforming the AIDS Response.” This theme was announced by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO), and it addresses challenges like funding cuts that have disrupted HIV prevention and treatment services, emphasizing the need for a new, transformative approach to achieve the goal of ending AIDS by 2030.

According to the World Health Organization, “approximately 40.8 million people were living with HIV at the end of 2024.”

In Nigeria, approximately two million people have HIV, based on 2024 data. This number is estimated for adults and children, with about 1.9 million being adults aged 15–49 years.

According to the Director-General, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Dr. Temitope Ilori, 87 per cent of people living with HIV in Nigeria know their status, and 98 per cent of those who know their status are on life-saving treatment, while 95 per cent of those on treatment have achieved viral suppression and can no longer transmit HIV. She added that Nigeria remained firmly on track to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, adding that the country had continued to record important milestones in its HIV response.

The DG also said Nigeria had maintained an impressive 87–98–95 performance toward the global 95–95–95 targets, demonstrating significant progress in diagnosis, treatment coverage, and viral suppression across the country. She observed that the country has recorded a 46 per cent decline in new HIV infections, and more Nigerians living with HIV are enrolled and retained in care than ever before in the last decade.

Daily Trust notes that Nigeria has done a lot over the years towards prevention and treatment of the disease.

We recall that when global funding uncertainties threatened to disrupt essential services, on February 1, 2022, then-President Muhammadu Buhari launched a N62 billion intervention fund for the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS in the country. The HIV Trust Fund of Nigeria (HTFN), a child of NACA and driven by the Nigeria Business Coalition Against AIDS (NiBUCAA), a private intervention, was conceived as a sustainable financing mechanism for mobilising and deploying domestic private sector resources to address the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) of HIV in Nigeria.

Dr. Ilori had said that, in addition to the support of the Trust Fund, the federal government has injected $200 million to ensure the uninterrupted delivery of HIV prevention, testing, and treatment services, which made the availability of testing services uninterrupted in the country.

However, even with these positive results recorded in the fight against HIV in the country, it is not time to relax. Rather, we should put in more effort to prevent the disease to the barest minimum.

Nigeria, with its plethora of human and material resources, is certainly a fertile ground to carry out research to find the cure to a deadly disease that has continued to claim lives across the globe for decades.

We note that many false starts were made in the past, with several people claiming to have the power to cure the disease but refusing to submit their claims for scientific analyses. Some were later discovered to be frauds. Even fraudulent non-governmental organisations have turned AIDS-related issues into a thriving business for personal gain.

This should not dampen our resolve to continue to search for a home-grown cure in the face of dwindling resources from the international community. Any success is not only for Nigeria but for humanity as a whole.

Our researchers should begin from the point of progress already made by the international scientific community, including the stem-cell-related trial and twice-a-year injections.

NACA should also ensure that results of researches it conducts in conjunction with relevant organisations are subject to the appropriate scientific analyses to disprove or confirm. It is remarkable, even with the current state of research, that, unlike in the past, HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence, as those infected who regularly take anti-retroviral drugs along with good diet can now live a healthy and long life. Diseases like cancer and malaria are now said to kill more and faster than HIV/AIDS.

Daily Trust also believes that while the country has made significant progress in its sustained campaign to enlighten the populace on HIV prevention and cure, as well as reducing stigma against those suffering from the disease, more work remains. In this regard, we acknowledge the contributions of federal and state governments, as well as non-governmental organisations, and urge them to sustain the momentum to achieve zero new cases. To end AIDS by 2030, the importance of collaborative efforts cannot be overemphasised; meaning all sectors of society must contribute to the response.

Certainly, a sustained effort across all fields will lead Nigeria to successfully fight the scourge of HIV/AIDS.

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