[e-drug] Jimmy Carter visits Nigerian ARV programme

[e-drug@usa.healthnet.org]

E-DRUG: Jimmy Carter visits Nigerian ARV programme
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[The delayed Nigerian ARV programme has now started, and president
Obasanjo is likely to announce this in a meeting on 9 March.
The meeting is attended by Jimmy carter, Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard,
William H Gates, the father of Bill Gates, who gave USD 25m
for an AIDS prevention programme in Nigeria.

The Health Minister also announced that PLWAs who have come
out, will get preferential access to the ARVs. This in the context
of the very serious stigma around HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.

A PMTCT programme is also starting soon.
Watch this space! Copied as fair use. WB]


Carter, Bill Gate's Father In Fight Against HIV/Aids

This Day (Lagos), March 6, 2002

by Chukwudi Nwabuko And Juliana Taiwo, in Abuja

Former US President Jimmy Carter, his wife Rosalyn, the father of Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates, William H.Gates, Sr., and his wife Mimi, will this
week lead a delegation to Nigeria and two other African countries to draw
attention to the urgent need for comprehensive strategies to fight
HIV/AIDS.

This is coming as Health Minister Prof. A. B. C. Nwosu said yesterday that
Bill Gates has committed $25 million for Anti-AIDS activity in Nigeria
through an NGO, AIDS Prevention Initiative in Nigeria (APIN).
The delegation would arrive Nigeria Friday and will participate in a
Nigerian HIV/AIDS summit on Saturday. The group plans to meet President
Olusegun Obasanjo, government officials and political leaders, health
workers, faith-based groups, volunteers, and people living with HIV/AIDS.

Speaking at the inaugural meeting of the Country Coordinating Mechanism
(CCM) on the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM) in Abuja
yesterday, Nwosu said the financial mechanism was to show how well the
specific projects are carried out. He said there is need to build a wall
that will fight the scourge, saying that his ministry in conjunction with
the different NGOs will target and direct the campaign to the sexually
active segment of the Nigerian society including students in institutions
of higher learning, long distance truck drivers, commercial sex workers and
drug users discovered in some parts of the country.

Nwosu remarked that the distribution of the Anti-Retroviral drugs in
various centres in Nigeria to people living with HIV/AIDS, (PLWAS) has
commenced, adding that only those who have publicly said they are living
with HIV/AIDS will have access to the drugs.

He said many top government functionaries in all the tiers of government
have been coming to him in secret claiming to have cousins and other
relatives that have the dreaded disease, maintaining that the drugs will go
straight to those that have publicly admitted to living with the disease.

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