Onslaught on HIV/AIDS
• Oyo leads campaign, NACA DG lauds efforts against spread of disease
• Testing for HIV/AIDS
The Oyo State Government has been commended for its efforts in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS, leading to the drop in the prevalence of the disease in the state.
Director-General, National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Dr. Temitope Ilori, stated this in Ibadan during a visit. She praised the government and Oyo State Agency for the Control of AIDs, for being good partners in the national response to the eradication and elimination of HIV/AIDS:
“Oyo SACA is one of the leading agencies in the federation, owing to its past community and media engagements, in terms of jingles, documentaries to enlighten the people. I know as far back as I was the Commissioner for Health in Osun State which is over 10years now, Oyo SACA has been active.
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“Theres always one jingle or the other and documentaries to talk about HIV/AIDS, which I often listened to then in my car. So I give kudos to you and I say keep up the good work.” She acknowledged efforts of government in the domestication of the political declaration that talks about 95 per cent of the general population getting tested to know their status vis a vis getting medication and treatment for viral suppression:
“It is yielding results to meet up with the global target.” She solicited more partnerships with the state in reaching the people who need to be reached in the fight against HIV/AIDS: “The national response team is always ready to give the necessary support when needed. We all should come together to stem the tide of HIV/AIDS nationally and to ensure that 2030 target of making HIV/AIDS a less epidemic disease becomes a reality.”
Commissioner for Health, Dr. Oluwaserimi Ajetunmobi, appreciated the visit being the first point of call by the DG NACA: “The fight against HIV/AIDS calls for everyone involved to take ownership of their health so as to live a better quality life.
“Part of the plans in the fight against HIV/AIDS is to go on community awareness/engagement, involving religious leaders from all aspects to preach the message through their different platforms that anyone that has the disease should take responsibility of their health on their own.
“If you know you have the disease and you want to get better, get people to assist you instead of waiting till they reach out to you. We dont want the progress that we have achieved so far to go down. We want the indices of the prevalence to go further down.”
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. Kehinde Ayinde, said: “Oyo State has been setting the pace regarding state ownership programmes on HIV/AIDS and were ready to take over. We have done a lot in the past year with about 1,600 delivery points.
“Also, we have about 1,004 traditional births attendance points giving us support with HIV/AIDS service delivery. We did better last year at facility testing with about 129,293 pregnant women tested and about 29,220 people tested at the community level.”
Also present was Chairman, Oyo SACA, Dr. Gbola Adetunji and other state functionaries.