Panafrican News Agency - December 3, 2001
Segun Adeyemi, PANA Correspondent

The AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN) project, has designed a number of intervention activities in three pilot States - Lagos and Oyo, both in the South-West, and Central Plateau.

Project Manager, Wole Odutolu, told PANA in Lagos APIN had been involved in the areas of surveillance, community intervention, collaboration with Universities and allied institutions, as well as support for Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), among others.

Specifically, he said the project supported the 2001 HIV/Syphilis Sentinel Survey through capacity building for Nigerian laboratory scientists, provision of laboratory supplies and reagents, developing and equipping a national archival centre in Abuja and support for molecular virology on the samples at the University College Hospital in Ibadan, capital of Oyo.

"We have done this with the belief that surveillance is a critical part of prevention and that to develop effective intervention strategies, it is vitally important to monitor the epidemic and the virus regularly and to disseminate the information widely," said Odutolu.

He expressed the hope that with the sentinel survey and APIN projects in the States, "we will be able to generate a complete cartography of the HIV types and sub-types present in each State in Nigeria."

Odutolu said such data would be "extremely informative" for understanding the dynamics of the country's HIV/AIDS epidemic.

He listed other areas of APIN's involvement as developing the capacity of collaborating institutions in HIV surveillance, diagnosis of sexually transmitted diseases and prevention of mother-to-child transmission, support for community-based intervention programmes in its focus States and collaboration with State Action Committees on AIDS.

"The comprehensiveness of the project speaks for itself and the leadership of the project believes that as the results of our various research efforts begin to unfold, many more community interventions will be designed and implemented," Odutolu said.

The project is backed by the US-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and has also received widespread support from federal and State governments in Nigeria, even though it faces challenges of lack of statistical data and genuine partnerships.

Apparently alarmed at the outcome of the sentinel survey, which showed an increase in the national HIV prevalence rate from 5.4 percent in 1999 to 5.8 percent (among the 15-49 age-group) in 2001, the APIN official said "The current scenario of the epidemic in Nigeria calls for wider participation by all Nigerians from all works of life."

His reaction to the report released last week, tallies with those of many involved in the battle against the disease.

The rise in prevalence rate, in human terms, means that the number of Nigerians infected with the virus that causes AIDS has increased from 2.6 million to 3.01 million.

Sereer Ara of UNICEF, Lagos, said more intervention activities were needed to stem the tide, noting that such activities were the only way to change people's behaviour toward the campaign against HIV/AIDS.

"Behaviour change will not come overnight, it does not come easy," she said.

Speaking in the same vein, Akin Jimoh of Media Resources and Advocacy Centre, a media-based NGO, said: "We have to find a way of meeting people at their point of need. We have to find a way of passing the core message to the people by making them to see sex or the use of unsterilised instruments as potentially dangerous."
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