TO improve domestic funding for Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and prevent new infections especially from mother to child transmission, the Federal Government may soon introduce AIDS tax.
Also, the country has improved its domestic funding for HIV by 10 per cent.
Meanwhile, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have stepped up calls on the National Assembly to represent the anti-stigmatisation bill and give it accelerated hearing.
In the same vein, the government through the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) has received additional $25 million (N4 billion) from the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria, and another $17 million (N2.72 billion) from UNITAID for the Prevention/Elimination of Mother To Child Transmission of HIV (PMTCT).
NACA also plans to include HIV/AIDS testing, care and treatment as some of the services offered by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). Before now HIV/AIDS is one of the few diseases not covered by the NHIS.
UNITAID is an international drug purchase facility, established to provide long-term, sustainable and predictable funding to increase access and reduce prices of quality drugs and diagnostics for the treatment of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in developing countries.
Director General of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), Prof. John Idoko, in an interview with The Guardian said: "One of the things we have always proposed, which we are taking forward, which we hope we will take forward even with the National Assembly and the Executive is the issue of some minimal tax from not only the cellphone but the airline. In fact that is how we get money to treat children with HIV using UNITAIDS and it is happening in many countries in East and Southern Africa now.
"UNITAID gave this country $17million last year to treat HIV. How was that money sourced? Most of it was airline taxes not in Nigeria but from countries that are as poor as Niger are contributing to it. Right now in various eastern and southern African countries this process is on either approved or going through the legislative process so that they can raise money to support HIV. You and I know domestic funding needs to go up because we are seeing a shrinking up of donor funding."
The NACA chief added: "You will notice from the recent joint United Nation programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) report that the biggest gain is in eliminating mother to child transmission.
One of the things we have done from last year World AIDS Day (WAD), which had the theme, Getting to Zero, Mrs. Patience Jonathan launched an accelerated mother to child prevention/elimination programme. We have been running on that and as a result of that the PMTCT programme has expanded.
"As at last year we have increased the number to over 200 sites. We had like 600 but we now have about 800 sites doing PMTCT. But even more importantly, we now decided that we needed to be strategic, put our money where it mattered most, where the greatest burden is, where we can get the greatest result. If you look at the whole country and you look at the prevalence there are 12 plus one states, the plus one is the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), that we believe that are responsible for 60 per cent of the burden.
"It may interest you to know that we have the Global Fund has given us $25 million just for these 12 plus one states. In addition is the 'Save One Million Lives' programme of the federal government, a big component of it is the elimination of MTCT. So we have like sort of aligned these two and it is working in those states. The biggest gain I think we have in those states is that we are seeing a gradual but a form ownership of the programme by the states and that is what we want because that is what is sustainable. The states are: Benue, Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Plateau, Abia, Cross River, Bayelsa, Nasarawa, Kaduna and the Federal Capital Territory."
On the improvement of domestic funding for HIV/AIDS, Idoko said: "We have evidence from our National AIDS spending assessment that unlike before where we have 15 per cent contribution from the country, this time it has gone to 25 per cent and the contributions are from many both communities, governments at certain levels, the private sector. So we have reduced donor support from 85 per cent to about 75 per cent."
Idoko said his office was working with a number of such organisations to ensure that the AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (ATM) committee of the House of Representatives represented the bill for accelerated passage.
