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Author: Dr. UZODINMA ADIRIEJE
Posted to the web: 9/12/2005 1:42:11 AM

It has been said that of the 10 HIV infections that take place in the world every minute, one occurs in Nigeria. Eight hundred thousand of the 5.2 million children orphaned by AIDS worldwide in 2003 were also said to be in Nigeria. Across most of African countries and Nigeria in particular, thousands of people are dying of ailments whose diagnoses are hardly made public especially by family members. ICASA - the International Conference on AIDS and STIs (Sexually Transmitted Infections) in Africa is organised by the Society for AIDS in Africa (SAA). Each ICASA is tailored to be a great opportunity for realising and expanding the current local and global efforts and commitments towards providing concern, care, support and cure for everyone infected and/or affected by HIV/AIDS, especially in the African continent. The imperative of ICASA is underscored by the fact that HIV/AIDS care goes beyond antiretroviral treatment. It includes such integrated interventions like the life-extending treatment (LET) package, as well as processes that build bridges between clinical and community interventions to provide the working partnerships that all HIV/AIDS control programmes require in order to succeed. Such interventions would include regular provision of nutritious foods for persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWAs), prevention and/or treatment of opportunistic infection such as tuberculosis (TB) in PLWAs, and provision of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) for HIV. Others are the institutionalisation of home/community-based care and tackling HIV-related stigma in health care settings, families and communities; provision of substitution therapy for persons under management for drug usage/addiction; traditional health care practices and micronutrient supplementation. ICASA’s bottom line, therefore, is to find ways of managing and reversing the impact of HIV/AIDS and STIs in Africa. ICASA brings together African scientists, social leaders, political leaders and communities who share their experiences and current trends in the management of HIV/ AIDS and STIs from an African perspective. Countries use it to hold regional conferences and workshops on HIV/AIDS and STIs; thus enabling the continent to take stock and analyse various responses to the management of HIV/AIDS and STIs and their impact. It also helps African scientists to learn more about what is happening in other African countries, provides a forum for scientists, policy makers, political leaders, PLWAs and communities to share current advances and strategies in the management of HIV/AIDS and STIs. These are analysed from community, socio-economic, cultural and scientific viewpoints. The conference will eventually come up with strategic priorities and best practices for the control and prevention of these diseases, from an African viewpoint.The next ICASA, the 14th in the series, would hold in Abuja, Nigeria, December 4-9, 2005, under the theme 'HIV/AIDS and the family'. It is expected to attract some 12, 000 scientists, researchers, policy makers/implementers, business concerns, government and non-governmental persons/organisations, from within and outside Africa. The world envisages that the Nigeria that hosted CHOGM and COJA successfully would equally rise up to the occasion and successfully host the international health community in December 2005.Although the first case of AIDS was and acknowledged in Nigeria in 1986, it took almost a decade later and several avoidable infections, for Nigerians to begin to accept the virtual reality that HIV and AIDS have become. Meanwhile, the country’s prevalence rate for the disease moved from 1.8 per cent in 1993 to 3.8 per cent in 1994, 4.5 per cent in 1996 and 5.4 per cent in 1999. Crossing the 5 per cent prevalence mark meant that the epidemic had become explosive with potentially grave consequences. HIV/AIDS had become widespread to every state, local government and even every community in the country. Characteristically, the prevailing denials and perennial poor attention/funding which is the lot of health care in Nigeria, ensured that appropriate attention from the government and people of this country eluded the disease. Indeed, the l999 sentinel survey showed that young persons between the ages of 19 and 24 - who represent the most productive, reproductive and economically viable segment of the society - were most affected. HIV/AIDS was spreading across the country like a wild wind because of unstable political climate, lack of political will, poor government’s commitment and involvement, lack of a coordinated multi-sectoral approach against the epidemic, undue concentration of existing intervention programmes, poor prioritization that entails necessary interventions competed with other developmental needs leading to poor resource allocation to HIV/AIDS interventions.The advent of democratic rule provided the opportunity for a multi-sectoral approach to the control of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. The Federal Government under His Excellency, President Olusegun Obasanjo, established the National Action Committee on AIDS in Nigeria (NACA); as the organization charged with the coordination of all HIV/AIDS-related activities in the country in order to ensure that all available human and material resources, and all opportunities and capacities from all sectors were harnessed, managed and deployed in an integrative manner to control this scourge. The imperative for NACA can hardly be overemphasized. Ours is a society where most activities are compartmentalized and apportioned to various ministries, without a clear-cut modality for harmoniously handling overlapping interests. On its own, HIV/AIDS, by virtues of its impacts and scope of rapaciousness, has become the most health-related development issue of the last century; with its adverse effects heavily felt in all sectors of human endeavour, be it social, economic, agricultural, educational, industrial, and so on. African countries, their friends, companies and citizens have been cooperating with the international business and social communities to achieve great things. Fortunately, ICASA/SAA and NACA are respectively headed by Professor Femi Soyinka and Professor Babatunde Osotimehim – two great intellectuals of our time, committed patriots and worthy gentlemen. They must be fully supported for their missions to be accomplished. Let us demonstrate to the world that we can support and cooperate with them for the control of the HIV/AIDS scourge and greater advancement of Nigeria, Africa and humanity at large. Every effort counts! Every support is welcome!