UNAIDS: Nigeria Recorded 64% Increase in HIV Treatment Through Community-based Intervention

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

A new report by the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAID) has shown how programmes delivered by community-based organisations in Nigeria gave rise to a 64 per cent increase in access to HIV treatment, thus doubling the HIV prevention service utilisation.

The report also indicated the critical role communities play, and how underfunding and harmful barriers are holding back the  lifesaving work of community-based organisations and obstructing the end of AIDS.

According a statement issued by UNAIDS to mark the World AIDS Day, the body urged governments across the world to unleash the power of grassroots communities across the world to lead the fight to end AIDS.

“A new report launched today by UNAIDS, ‘Let Communities Lead’, shows that AIDS can be ended as a public health threat by 2030, but only if communities on the frontlines get the full support they need from governments and donors.
“Communities across the world have shown that they are ready, willing and able to lead the way. But they need the barriers obstructing their work to be pulled down, and they need to be properly resourced.

“Too often, communities are treated by decision-makers as problems to be managed, instead of being recognised and supported as leaders. Communities are not in the way, they light the way to the end of AIDS,” Executive Director of UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima, said.
The report which was launched in London during a World AIDS Day event organised by the civil society organization STOPAIDS, Byanyina said, shows how communities have been the driving force for progress.

UNAIDS  further said that the report showed that investing in community-led HIV programmes delivers transformational benefits.
‘It sets out how programmes delivered by community-based organizations in Nigeria were associated with a 64 per cent increase in access to HIV treatment, a doubling of the likelihood of HIV prevention service utilisation, and a four-fold increase in consistent condom use among people at risk of HIV.
“It also notes how, among sex workers reached by a package of peer-based services in the United Republic of Tanzania, the HIV incidence rate was reduced to below half (5 per cent vs 10.4 per cent),” he stated.

On his part, Executive Director of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition, Solange Baptiste, said that  in the 2021 Political Declaration on ending AIDS, United Nations member states recognised the critical role communities play in HIV service delivery, particularly to people most at risk of HIV.
“However, whereas in 2012, when over 31 per cent  of HIV funding was channelled through civil society organisations, 10 years later, in 2021, only 20 per cent  of funding for HIV was available—an unprecedented backsliding in commitments which has cost and is continuing to cost lives,” Baptiste said.