Etisalat Nigeria Partners UNAIDS To Stop Mother-To-Child HIV Transmission
                          

Etisalat Nigeria has joined hands with the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS to support the National Agency for the Control of AIDS, in a campaign to ensure that no child in Nigeria is born with HIV.
The UNAIDS and Etisalat partnership, sealed through a Memorandum of Understanding signed on Wednesday, will allow the telecommunications company’s 21 million customers to benefit from regular text messages on how and where to access prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV services in Nigeria.

In July 2011, a global plan towards the elimination of new HIV infections among children and keeping their mothers alive was launched at the United Nations general assembly high level meeting on AIDS. On its part, in November 2014, Nigeria unveiled the National Operational Plan for the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV 2015-2016 to jump-start the implementation of similar efforts in the country.
It is against this backdrop that UNAIDS is collaborating with Etisalat Nigeria to support NACA, other government departments and the Civil Societies to boost Nigeria’s efforts to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV.

The Vice President, Regulatory and Corporate Affairs, Etisalat Nigeria, Ibrahim Dikko, said, “We are happy to partner with UNAIDS and NACA for this unique cause. We recognise that a nation can only be economically buoyant if it has a healthy population. This we are committed to building, by attacking its most deadly threats, one of which is HIV/AIDS.”

 The Director General, NACA, Prof. John Idoko, said the initiative was bound to avail more avenues of stopping new HIV infections in Nigeria. “We welcome this new impetus Etisalat is bringing to the HIV response in Nigeria,” Idoko said.

The UNAIDS Country Director for Nigeria, Dr. Bilali Camara, said ending the HIV epidemic among children in Nigeria by 2020 would result in preventing 240,000 new HIV infections among children and an additional 460,000 new HIV infections among adults.
He said, “In all, we are looking at preventing 340,000 AIDS-related deaths and a net benefit of 30 billion United States dollars, with 12 million life-years gained.”
In 2013, Nigeria represented 30 per cent of the burden of mother-to-child transmission of HIV globally, although new scientific evidence indicates the target to have zero new HIV infections among children is achievable.
source:punchnews