Just many years after governments around the world stepped up efforts to fight t acquired immunodeficiency syndrome with technology, Nigeria is waking to the reality and she is even celebrating her sore footedness and refractory approach to the pandemic.
The celebration was triggered after the country procured new software to arrest HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases.
The software is extendable and can be modified to handle a range of diseases including malaria, TB as well as monitor other pandemics.
Nigeria is the first country in the world to deploy such analytical software capable of rapid diagnostic tests and offer the potential to provide acute diagnosis to all at-risk population for the first time.
Scientists at the National Biotechnology Development Agency (NABDA), along with other scientists in Trinitron Biotech, are working on the development of other rapid diagnostic test kits, including Hepatitis, Malaria, Tuberculosis and more recently, Lassa fever.
But like everything Nigeria, breakthrough would be abandoned because of funds, criticism and doubt.
The most significant technological breakthrough has been a kind of prologue with the antiretroviral treatment which reduces both the mortality and the morbidity of HIV infection.
It is important that Nigeria recognize that technology and HIV/AIDS are the two most profound developments on society and its surroundings in a number of ways.
Imagine the society in its dark years without today's global economy and a world without AIDS is a set of symptoms and infections resulting from the damage to the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
It begins by recognizing efforts at stemming the tide and encouraging local inputs to the fight against the dreaded disease.
Nigeria should also recognize that AIDS is now a plague is decimating the world’s population with over 4 million people already killed and another 38 million living with the disease including over 500,000 children.
There are over 4 million Nigerians living with HIV/AIDS and in 2005, over 300,000 Nigerians died of HIV/AIDS related illnesses.
