The coverage of prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) services has remained low in Nigeria with a reach of only 30 percent of eligible women in the country. Also, Nigeria is among the countries with the slowest decline in new HIV infections among children, with an estimated 21,000 new child HIV infections in Nigeria in 2020, the highest in the world, accounting for 14 percent of the global estimate. Assistant secretary general/deputy executive director, Programs for UNAIDS, Dr.
Angeli Ahrekar disclosed this at the Nigeria HIV conference, themed: Nigeria HIV Prevention Conference, with the theme: “Accelerating HIV Prevention to End AIDS through Innovations and Community Engagement”, recently in Abuja. She called for a renewed and intensive efforts to achieve the level of scale-up needed to meet the PMTCT goals, stressing that funding was currently not one of the major challenges of PMTCT program in Nigeria. “We would want to see a renewed and intensive efforts to achieve the level of scale-up needed to meet the PMTCT goals.
“The future of Nigeria’s children cannot be left unchecked, concerted and urgent action must be taken to avert children being consigned to live a lifetime with a virus that is now preventable. We need to end the vertical transmission of the epidemic to have an AIDS-free generation in Nigeria,” said Dr. Ahrekar.
However, she noted that inequalities, fueled by social rejection and discrimination, marginalisation and criminalisa.