Nigeria is going to establish more anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment centers in areas where increased incidence of HIV infection has been recorded in recent years, the state-owned News Agency of Nigeria reported on Sunday.

Usman Sarki, HIV/AIDS program director in Kaduan state, north Nigeria, was quoted as saying the Kaduna state government "is to establish an ARV treatment center in Saminaka" where the prevalence rate has increased to 10 percent.

He said the center would be set up at the Saminaka General Hospital in conjunction with the Columbia University of the United States.

Sarki attributed the upsurge to the fact that Saminaka was a junction town where long distance drivers spend their nights, noting that activities in the town in the southeastern part of the state "have worsened" in recent years.

He recalled that in 2001 when prevalence rate in the state was 12 percent, Kafanchan was the "hot spot" in terms of the large number of people infected.

Now that the prevalence in the state had dropped to 5.6 percent going by the latest sentinel survey conducted in 2005, the news from Saminaka was shocking, he added.

The program director explained that more than 1,000 people now have accesses to ARV from hospitals in Kafanchan, Tudun Wada and Zaria, under the Kaduna State HIV program.

The program, he said, had received a boost in recent years as compared to before when it was treated as a sub-head under the Ministry of Health's annual budget.

This year, 200 million naira (about 1.55 million U.S. dollars) was appropriated for the implementation of HIV programs, with 100 million naira (about 775,000 dollars) devoted for procurement of ARV and another 100 million naira for logistics, he explained.

The impact of the various programs was being felt as the issues of stigmatization and victimization against people with the virus had dropped, he noted.

Procurement Officer for Kaduna State Action Committee on AIDS ( KSACA) Andrew Yohanna said the committee had spent 264.21 million naira (about 2.05 million dollars) in the last two years, working with 16 ministries and 20 non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

He said 17 centers and two military hospitals were already running the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission (PMTCT) program.

Zainab Idris, an official of World Bank's State Project Team ( SPT), said efforts were being made to transform KSACA into an agency "so that activities of all stakeholders will be harmonized. "

Source: Xinhua