LAGOS – A medical researcher, Prof. Oni Idigbe, on Friday expressed concern over the public’s low patronage of Prevention of Mother-to-Children Transmission of HIV (PMTCT) services in Nigeria.
Idigbe, the Coordinator, Tuberculosis/HIV Programmes at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR), Yaba, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
The researcher, who said that the rate of counselling and testing of expectant mothers was very low, explained that lack of access and low patronage of PMTCT could thwart efforts at protecting future generations against HIV infection.
“We need to improve our PMTCT, our PMTCT is still very low, that is Prevention of Mother- to-Child Transmission. [eap_ad_1] “I was in the U.S. last year in Washington AIDS meeting and the Mayor of Washington came and announced that for the past six, seven years, there is no child that has been born positive for HIV by an infected mother.
“So, we should have that now. We are still at the level of 17 per cent coverage for women who need PMTCT.
“If you look at the opposite of it; it means we are still not reaching 83 per cent of pregnant women that need PMTCT. So, we still have a long way to go.“
Idigbe, however, urged government at all levels to scale up activities of the programme to enable the country to reduce HIV burden to 90 per cent by 2015.
He said that the persisting high burden of HIV-infected pregnant women was an indication of the need to urgently improve the PMTCT programme, especially in the rural areas.
The researcher also called on health workers to cooperate with the media to ensure that accurate information on PMTCT services were given to the people. (NAN)
[eap_ad_4]
