Lagos — Nigeria has achieved an unprecedented 90 per cent success in creating awareness about HIV and Aids through activities of the National Action Committee for Aids (NACA) even as President Olusegun Obasanjo has signed into law the Bill to upgrade the Committee into a full fledged agency for sustainability.

The Global Fund has also released another $180 million for HIV and Aids treatment for the period five years.

Disclosing these during a world press conference, in |Lagos, Chairman of the National Action Committee on Aids, (NACA), Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin said the body had done well.

Continuing at the briefing tagged, "HIV and Aids, NACA Score Card" he went down memory lane on how bad the problem of HIV and Aids was in the early detection in Nigeria, affirming that Nigeria has at least achieved 90 percent awareness as against 20 per cent in 1999.

According to him, almost every Nigeria has heard about HIV and Aids. We have been able to bring about behavioural change and it has significantly change perception that Nigeria men have a special protection against HIV and Aids"

He recalled that in the past years, Nigeria failed to address the problem and there was a great denial as many people felt it was something that belongs to someone else and all of these resulted to low awareness and low personal risk perception, growing disease burden, poor coordination until NACA was established in 2001 to bring in so many actors in the health sector.

Narrating how NACA was able to raise awareness in Nigeria, he said, "We brought in Religious leaders, youths, Civil society organizations amongst other we ensured that all voices are heard and are taken into consideration. With our mandate to build capacity and provide enabling environment, we monitor, evaluate to see that we are in the right direction and to ensure that Nigeria is with good knowledge and support for people with HIV and Aids.

With continued efforts, "I am proud to announce that prevalence has dropped twice, in 2003 and 2005 respectively. We are going to conduct another survey before the end of 2007. In 2003 Nigeria HIV prevalence dropped from 5.8 to 5.0 and in 2005 to 4.4 "

On the present, Osotimehin stated that high political commitment has actually increased funding on HIV and Aids. He said only in 2006, Federal Government spent N7 billion on HIV/Aids.

With better funding, currently, Nigeria has 168 treatment sites, with over 100,000 people on treatment.

"We have introduced Family life HIV Education Curriculum (FLHE). We now have reduction in stigma and discrimination and providing care for 100,000 Nigerians through funds from Global fund and GHAIN

On their plans for the future, the NACA boss announced that President Olusegun Obasanjo has signed into law the Bill to upgrade the committee into an Agency for sustainability.

Osotimehin explained that the Global Fund grant was suspended in 2005 last year due to slow disbursement of funds contrary to speculations that it was because of misappropriation by NACA. "There was never an issue of transparency. What happened is that we were slow to ensure that activities are carried out before disbursement. We did not have any issue to resolve."

He further announced that the same Global fund has granted a new grant of $180 million for a period of five years.

Appealing to would be governors to support the fight against HIV and Aids, he said the issues should be addressed without political coloration.

Part of his expectations were that by the end of 2007, at least two voluntary counseling centres would be located in each local government area of the state, whil five treatment sites would be established in each state as against one site currently running in each state.

Nigeria, being Africa's most populous nation with 1 in 6 Africans being Nigerian has an HIV prevalence that is comparatively low, but the size of the country's population meant that by the end of 2005, HIV prevalence was put at 4.4 per cent as against the 5.8 in 2003.

However, the country has a great deal of influence in West Africa. It is an important member of ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) and plays a central role in ECOMOG's (the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group) peacekeeping operation . HIV/Aids has already badly affected Nigeria society and its economy. If the epidemic continues at its current rate, or worsens, there could be knock on effects across the whole region.

In 1986, the first case of Aids was identified in Lagos, and HIV prevalence rose from 1.8 percent in 1988 to 5.8 percent in 2001. From 1986 and 1991, the Federal Ministry of Health has carried out a National HIV/syphilis sentinel seroprevalence survey every two years. The 2003 survey estimated that there were 3,300,000 adults living with HIV/Aids in Nigeria, and 1,900,000 (57per cent) of these were women.

In the 2003 survey, the national HIV prevalence had dropped to 5 percent from 5.8 per cent in 2001. However, it found that state prevalence rates varied from as low as 1.2 percent in Osun state to as high as 12 per cent in Cross Rivers State. Overall, 13 of Nigeria's 36 states had an HIV prevalence over 5 percent. These figures give support to the claim that there are explosive, localized epidemics in some states.