Saturday Punch, May 23, 2009, Page 22

56,000 Children born with HIV Infection Annually

Country Director of the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria, Dr. Patrick Dakum, has disclosed that over 56,000 children are born annually with the Human Immuno Virus in the country.

Dakum, who spoke at the Institute’s orientation program for Chief Medical Directors and Program Coordinators for the North Central Zone in Jos on Friday, said that more than 850,00 people needed to be on retroviral drug. He, however lamented that only 300,000 people were on the drugs pointing out that he rest of them were currently roaming free in the society.

He said that if these people were not tested, they will not be able to know their status. The Country Director said that with the prevalence rate of 4.8 percent, the population of people living with HIV can be put at between 3 and 5 million.

Dakum advocated the need to train traditional birth attendants at the community level so that the prevalence rate of the scourge can be minimized. He however, expressed delight that with the efforts made to fight the HIV scourge, it has been reduced from a terminal to a chronic disease.

He said, “In Nigeria right now, we have about 850,000 people that need to be on drug and we have only 300,000 on treatment. It means that we need to have about 500,000 additional but note that every year, we have about 56,000 children that are born with HIV and we need not to have that.