Health Minister, Prof. Eyitayo Lambo, has said going by the recent sentinel survey conducted by Federal Ministry of Health on national HIV/Syphilis, result had shown that the prevalence has dropped by 5.0 per cent.
Lambo, who made this known at the launching of the Lions Fight - HIV/AIDS enlightenment campaign programme organised by the Lions International, District 404, Lagos, however cautioned Nigerians against rejoicing over the achievement.
"This decline is nothing to rejoice about because in real terms, this 5% translate to about 6 million Nigerians. In general, in spite of the decline, the battle is still on and there is no indication of victory in sight due to varying prevalence rates", he stated.
Lambo maintained that the socio-economic impact of the high prevalence rate means that an estimated 3.5m people are living with HIV/AIDS. This figure, Lambo noted, is the third largest in the world, after South Africa and India, adding that there were about 930.000 AIDS orphans in the country.
"Projections have shown that this is expected to increase to about 1.97m in 2015. This potentially poses tremendous strain on the limited social services available in the country". He noted further that from the pool of 3 million People Living With HIV/AIDS (PLWHA), the number that has developed clinical disease (full blown AIDS) at the end of 2001 was estimated at about 1.2 million, with over 900,000 orphans. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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