NACA wants $7.5bn to fight HIV/AIDS

By Tony Edike

ENUGU—NATIONAL Action Committee on AIDS (NACA), has said that it requires $7.5 billion to effectively fight the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the country in the next five years.

The Agency however, expressed worry that the prevalence might worsen in view of the staggering amount required for the fight, lamenting that a survey it conducted revealed that only an estimated $3billion could be raised by its donor agencies within the period for the project.

Director General of the NACA, Prof. John Idoko, who dropped the hint in Enugu,  yesterday at the 3rd National Council on AIDS, said that the support from World Bank and Global Funds was not enough to effectively tackle the scourge in the country.

He said that the Agency in line with the Millennium Development goals (MDG), had lined up four programmes to effectively undertake and drive comprehensive, AIDS programmes in communities within the country, stressing that the realization of the objective by the Federal Government would not be complete without effectively bringing down the prevalence rate.

He outlined the four prgrammes,  which the Agency would target in the next four years  to include prevention, which he said has shown a huge gap, following discovery that about 630 new infections were being recorded yearly.