The Acting President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, will meet, this week, with the Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), Mr Michel Sidibé, on how to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria.
In a statement issued in Abuja by the anti-HIV/AIDS UN agency, how to effectively mitigate the spread of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria would form the fulcrum of discussion between the acting president and the United Nations representative.
According to the statement, Michel Sidibé’s visit to Nigeria was part of UNAIDS agenda to ensure that developing countries were assisted to ensure less infections rate, saying the 2.7 million new cases that were recorded in 2007, which were mainly in the developing countries, remained unacceptable.
While calling for action towards elimination of mother-to-child transmission by 2015, Sidibe declared that “strengthened services for maternal health, for reproductive health and for pediatric health will mean we can prevent mothers from dying and babies from becoming infected with HIV.”
He added that “the AIDS response has been underpinned by a vibrant civil society movement that has relentlessly advocated for human rights, and I firmly believe that an effective AIDS response must be human rights-based. Yet, people living with HIV still lack basic rights in many countries. For example, 57 countries still impose some forms of restrictions on entry, stay and residence based on HIV status.”
Mr Sidibé has committed UNAIDS to advocate that all people living with HIV must have equal freedom of movement globally.
“We will stand by people affected by the indignity and injustice of restrictions when they or their family members have tried to go abroad or have been deported because of their HIV status,” Mr Sidibé also said in his 2010 letter to partners.