LAGOS, Nov 30 (AFP) - People living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria urgently need better access to anti-retroviral treatment, the international medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF - Doctors Without Borders) - said Tuesday.
Africa's most populous country of 130 million people started the administration of anti-retroviral ARV drugs on some 10,000 of its some four million people living with HIV/AIDS, in December 2001 at some designated centres across the country.
The MSF country head Sebastian Weber said in a statement sent to AFP ahead of World AIDS Day that the agency welcomed the governments plans to expand the HIV/AIDS treatment.
But he underlined that "just handing out drugs is not enough to save lives. Any programme that does not succeed in helping patients adhere to the strict treatment regimen is condemned to fail".
High dropout rates will lead to drug resistance and result in a public health disaster, he said.
Alongside the actual treatment with anti-retroviral drugs the MSF programme includes components such as voluntary counselling and testing, adherence to treatment support, treatment of opportunistic infections, improved nursing care, as well as social and psychological patient support.
"The use of generic anti-retroviral drugs is the key to treatment expansion. While being of the same quality as brand drugs, most generic anti-retrovirals cost less than half the price of brand drugs," he said.
"Moreover, only generic drugs are available in the form of so-called fixed-dose-combinations easy-to-use pills containing three anti-retroviral drugs in one tablet," he said.
"Only generic quality drugs guarantee that life-prolonging AIDS treatment can be provided as simply as possible to as many Nigerians as possible," Weber added.
"On the occasion of World AIDS Day MSF together with General Hospital Lagos presents a pioneer HIV/AIDS treatment programme," he said, adding that the programme could be a model for treatment programmes to be established in the country.
"The programme can serve as a model of best practice for Nigeria," Weber said.
In Lagos, MSF started treating HIV patients with anti-retroviral drugs in August 2004. Worldwide, MSF is providing antiretroviral treatment to over 23,000 people in a total of 27 countries.
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