Medical Practitioners Team Up for Ambitious HIV Treatment

Over twenty medical doctors from a range of specialisations have gathered in Abuja, Nigeria, took part in a sensitisation workshop on the UNAIDS treatment target – the 90-90-90.

The doctors from the Nigerian Medical Association and the Association of Resident Doctors listened to presentations by facilitators from UNAIDS and UNICEF on the ambitious treatment target and shared their views on how best to fast-track and achieve it by 2020.

The workshop organised by UNAIDS and the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) was meant to sensitise participants on the treatment target which aims at ensuring that, by the year 2020, 90 per cent of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status; 90 per cent of all people with diagnosed HIV infection will receive sustained antiretroviral therapy; and 90 per cent of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have viral load suppression.

"Unless medical practitioners are fully engaged and take ownership of the 90-90-90 target, it will be difficult to attain. They need to be in the driver’s seat for this process of testing, treating and retaining people on treatment to happen. When health care providers own the target, its success will be guaranteed in Nigeria,” said Dr Bilali Camara, UNAIDS country director for Nigeria and UNAIDS Focal Point for Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

The 90-90-90 treatment target was launched at a high-level political session of the 20th International AIDS Conference held in July 2014 in Melbourne, Australia, when the UNAIDS Executive Director, Michel Sidibé, called for a new set of treatment targets by 2020.

This is the third workshop of its kind in Nigeria. A similar workshop involving vulnerable women and girls took place in March this year, followed by another held in the month of May for journalists and people living with HIV.

NACA, UNAIDS and UNICEF will facilitate this workshop.