Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Associated Press - Friday, September 7, 2001
Glenn McKenzie, Associated Press Writer
The government's program had originally been scheduled to kick off Sept. 1. Officials, however, have not finished developing a system to administer and control the drugs, Health Minister Alphonsus Nwosu told journalists.
Authorities are working to weed out fraudulent HIV claims from Nigeria's notorious crime rings. Nwosu said the criminals were already trying to get on the list of 15,000 patients in order to obtain and resell the sought-after drugs on the black market.
Further complicating matters, nongovernment advocacy groups representing people with HIV are aggressively lobbying Nigeria's government to distribute the drugs through their organizations. Nwosu said the AIDS groups would be "integrally involved" in the distribution process.
"I would rather have the program right and the deadline wrong, than vice versa," said Nwosu, who has lost a sister to AIDS.
As of now, Nigeria - the most populous nation in Africa, with 120 million people - has virtually no treatment for AIDS patients. Medical care is too expensive for most patients here, where 2.6 million people are known to have the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
The $4 million program would provide cheap drugs to just a tiny fraction of those infected - 10,000 adults and 5,000 children.
Indian pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy Laboratories is among the companies being considered to provide anti-AIDS drugs to the program. Cipla, another Indian firm, already has a contract to sell a three-drug AIDS cocktail for $350 a year per patient. Patients will pay less than a third of that - about $120 - while the government will pick up the rest, Nwosu said.
He credited Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo with spearheading the effort. Obasanjo said he was committed to making sure the original 15,000 people chosen would "be provided with treatment as long as he is president."
The plan is the largest of its kind in Africa, according to Stephen Lewis, special envoy of Secretary-General Kofi Annan for HIV/AIDS in Africa.
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