The Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on AIDS, TB, and Malaria, Hon. Godwin-Amobi Ogah, has said he will flag off the 2023 commemoration campaign walk with committee members on Friday, while partner CSOs, CBOs, and youth groups will also be on hand for the walk.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) Nigeria, in a statement by its Advocacy and Marketing Manager, Steve Aborisade, also stated that this reminds the world that the fight against HIV/AIDS is not over with a commemorative walk taking off from the Berger roundabout under the bridge to terminate at the AHF Nigeria Country Office at Jabi, Abuja.
With the commemoration, advocates will honour all who have lost their lives to AIDS-related illnesses, support those who carry on the fight, unite people globally in battling HIV/AIDS, and reinforce the need to prioritise community effort and action from now on, as reflected in the global theme, ‘Let Community Lead’.
While the world has made significant progress over the past decades, the global HIV/AIDS response faces serious threats, including insufficient funding, dangerously high rates of 1.3 million new HIV transmissions annually, an estimated 630,000 deaths each year, and responses not being prioritised highly enough, particularly in lower-income countries.
AHF Nigeria’s World AIDS Day event includes community testing campaigns across the seven (7) programme states of AHF: Abuja, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, and Cross River. Of note is the special testing campaign in the FCT that AHF is implementing in collaboration with the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA). Across these locations, AHF Nigeria will also be distributing free condoms, with about 75, 000 free condoms slated for distribution.
“AHF Nigeria is actively and happily playing a supporting role to support the effort of the Nigerian government through NACA and the Federal Ministry of Health to end AIDS by 2030.
This can be seen in our deliberate interventions across our state, where we are prioritising projects that advance gender equality and that build the leadership potential at the grassroots level so that, in the real sense, we are empowering communities to lead.” said Dr Echey Ijezie, AHF Nigeria Country Programme Director (CPD) “In three of the AHF Nigerian states, community advocacy clubs have been instituted, and by the end of the first quarter of 2024, these clubs will be functioning across all our states.
Importantly, we are investing heavily in community education through radio to empower rural dwellers with the knowledge and information needed to prevent new infections and guarantee their welfare,” said Dr. Ijezie.
Observed annually on December 1, World AIDS Day gives HIV/AIDS advocates an opportunity to bring awareness to the global response, fight the harmful stigma and discrimination that hinder people living with HIV from seeking testing and treatment services, and urge governments worldwide to ensure the resources and political will are available to fight HIV/AIDS. On World AIDS Day, the world must remember that it’s not over.
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