Lagos — An extra £100 million will be channelled into fighting HIV and AIDS in Nigeria, British Minister for International Development Ivan Lewis announced yesterday.

The new six year 'Enhancing Nigeria's Response to HIV and AIDS' (ENR) programme will reach out to improve access to prevention, treatment, care and support services to those most vulnerable to HIV infection.

The ENR programme will reach 27 million young people with HIV and safer sex messages, and will use 1.2 billion condoms to reduce the number of new infections by 50,000 every year.

The Department for International Development (DFID) will work with the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), as part of the special relationship between the two organisations in Nigeria.

Statistics show the battle against the infection is being won slowly.

The Nigerian national average of HIV prevalence has gone from 5.8% in 2001, to 4.4% in 2005, to the latest figure of 3.6%.

This is because of a national and state wide drive which has included a package of preventative programmes and activities including the scale up of counselling and testing, better education and public awareness, more acurate information and also greater access to anti-retroviral treatment, care and support.

Yet Nigeria has the second highest number of people living with HIV in the world.

Over three million people are HIV positive and one million children have been orphaned by the disease. Since it was formed in 2000, NACA has increasingly focussed its efforts on becoming more strategic and co-ordinated in its response to the epidemic.

This compliments the commitment DFID has made across health, education and other sectors in Nigeria to strengthen programmes to fight HIV.

The £100 million ENR programme aims to:

-Target the most vulnerable groups in society - including women and children - and reduce those with HIV being discriminated against and marginalised.

-Support the use of accurate and reliable information to help set up new programmes and use existing ones more effectively

-Encourage a change in behaviour in the population, including the use of condoms as the most effective means of prevention

-Strengthen government systems, including health systems for treatment, at national level and in up to eight states.

Minister for International Development Ivan Lewis said: "The fall in HIV prevalence in Nigeria in recent years is great news but the country still faces huge challenges in fighting the epidemic.

"The country has the second highest number of people in the world living with HIV and so we must continue to take action to stop its spread. That is why the British Government is investing £100 million to support Nigeria as it increases its drive to prevent people getting infected."

NACA welcomed Ivan Lewis as well as the head of DFID Nigeria, Eamon Cassidy, and other important members of the minister's team.

DFID has played a crucial role in brokering debt relief for the country, and contributed to a host of aid programmes in the country.

Since NACA was formed in 2000 efforts have increasingly become more strategic, planned and coordinated. An appropriate enabling environment has been established with the adoption of key international and national policies and agreements including the "Three ones" principle, the signing of the Paris declaration and the domestication of the Global task team recommendations on donor harmonisation and alignment of support towards National leadership, systems and capacity.

National policies, strategies and plans covering the full spectrum of prevention, treatment, care and support have been put in place. NACA with its stakeholders has developed the National Strategic Framework (NSF) (2005-2009), the Nigerian National Response Information Management System (NNRIMS) and helped with partners, including DFID, to actively step down the three ones principle, State Strategic plans and Monitoring and Evaluation Systems to State Action Committees and Agencies and help develop their ability to coordinate and manage.

Since early 2002 The Federal Government of Nigeria, The US President Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) have all actively supported scaling up of anti-retroviral treatment (ART) programmes across Nigeria. There are today over 250,000 positive persons on ART representing well over 40% coverage.

Efforts are also ongoing in expanding the number of treatment facilities, integrating Malaria, Tuberculosis, and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI) and reproductive health, scaling up of the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission (PMTCT) programmes from the current nearly 12,300 positive mothers receiving the drug as prophylaxis against infecting their children and increasing the number of HIV Counselling and Testing (HCT) centres. Nigeria has also been advised that Nigeria's GFATM Round 8 application for Health System Strengthening has been provisionally approved.

In tandem with efforts on scaling up treatment the National response is continuing to give emphasis to prevention. In 2007 a new national priority planning process derived from the NSF and the baseline situation across each of the states was developed in which prevention and Behavioral Change Communications (BCC) were important priorities. NACA with its partners is currently preparing to disseminate a National prevention plan and a revised BCC Strategy for 2008-2010, following an earlier launch of the National HCT scale up programme. Work is also currently proceeding on developing a public private partnership foundation for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) as part of the need to have an integrated and comprehensive approach.

Nigeria has made a concerted effort to contain HIV and AIDS. The National average HIV prevalence has progressively declined from 5.8% in 2001, to 4.4% in 2005 and the latest indications are that the rate has fallen again to 3.6%.

DFID has provided resources both financial and human across all sectors within Nigeria and HIV and AIDS, Health and Education Sectors have benefited in line with the UK Government's commitment to Nigeria, to human development and their support to tackling underlying issues such as poverty.

This support has included not only the direct bilateral aid set out in agreements between our respective countries but also the often less reported role played by the United Kingdom and DFID in brokering the relief of previous debts, funding of the Millennium Development Goals and contribution to other major international programs such as the GFATM for which Nigeria benefits and contributes significantly to our National programmes.

DFID actively promotes Nigerian Leadership across all sectors and at all levels and has embraced institutional development, system strengthening and capacity building not only in the Public Sector but across Civil Society including Networks of People living with HIV AIDS, Platforms and Support groups and important work at local and community levels.

DFID has worked in synergy with the Government to plan and design their programmes based on National Strategies and Priorities and in line with their comparative strengths. Apart from institutional development their programmes have focused on prevention, behaviour change communications and community empowerment through a variety of instruments and evidence based interventions. This is further reflected in their new multisectoral programme to enhance the Nigeria National HIV Response.

Through this new programme, DFID aims to contribute to Nigeria's achievement of Millennium Development Goal 6 which is to reduce the spread of HIV and mitigate the impact of AIDS on the lives of the most vulnerable groups. ENR will scale up prevention programmes in the public and private sectors, strengthen systems to plan, coordinate and monitor the response as well as deliver effective services, and support civil society's role in reaching marginalised populations and vulnerable groups.

The purpose of the ENR programme is to improve the access of those most vulnerable to infection to effective HIV and AIDS prevention, treatment, care and support information and services. The programme will focus on encouraging sustained behaviour change including increased use of condoms. It will also tackle the underlying, structural drivers of the epidemic, including HIV-related stigma and discrimination and gender inequality.