By Chukwuma Muanya, Senior Health Reporter

The scheme will be executed under the National AIDS Treatment Programme.

The government has said however, that it would not be able to meet the World Health Organisation (WHO's) target of treating 400,000 infected persons by the end of this year.

WHO, through its "3 by 5" initiative hopes to provide three million AIDS sufferers in developing countries with life-prolonging anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs by end of 2005, with Nigeria billed to cater 400,000 of the infected persons.

Health Minister, Prof. Eyitayo Lambo had on Wednesday last week announced plans to treat 100,000 Persons Living With AIDS (PLWHA) by June this year.

But, the Chairman of the National Action Committee on AIDS(NACA), Prof. Babatunde Osotimehin, at a press conference at the weekend in Lagos, said the government had scaled the figure to 250,000. The forum was addressed by the Global Funds Chairman, Prof. Richard Feachem and Dr A Nasidi of the Federal Ministry of Health.

Lamb said: "with grants from Global Funds, President Bush Relief Project for AIDS in Africa (PEPFAR) and the Federal Government, the country will be able to treat 250,000 PLWHA by June 2006.

"The target of meeting the World Health Organisation (WHO) initiative of treating three million PLWHA in developing countries by the end of 2005, that is treating 400,000 in Nigeria is ambitious. I am not sure we will be able to meet that plan."
"We are beginning to move beyond the 15,000, we are adding an additional 50,000 from the PEPFAR grant. We have a situation that we hope by the end of the year we will be treating at least 100,000. With the Global Fund we hope to treat 50,000, and another 50,000 with PEPFAR grant. The Federal Government also gave money on Wednesday last week, and we hope by June next year, we will be able to treat at least 250,000 PLWHA."
Nigeria currently treats only about 15,000 PLWHA, of the 400,000 that are eligible for treatment under the highly subsidised scheme of N1,000 per patient monthly for anti-retroviral drugs under the National AIDS Treatment Programme.
Osotimehin further said that plans had been concluded to establish 774 Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centres (VCTC) nationwide. The government is also collaborating with Ranbaxy, a drug firm, to provide paediatric AIDS drugs to 1,200 children by April 2005.

"We believe that by the end of the year, every local council in Nigeria should have at least one VCTC. We are now using Cross River State as a test case. We are to establish 774 VCTC around the country, in every local council", he said.

The NACA chief said the agency had problems presenting ARV to children.

Osotimehin said that a survey by NACA showed that three million Nigerians are unaware they have the virus, adding that the result of aNigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) commissioned study on drug resistance HIV would soon be published.

"We are very conscious of emerging multi-drug resistant strains of HIV around the world. We have commissioned a study on drug resistance in the National AIDS Treatment Programme. This is being conducted by a team of researchers led by Dr Oni Idigbe of NIMR. The results will be available in the next five weeks. Most funds for the study came from Global Fund," he said.
A report from the Global Fund also shows that India, South Africa and Nigeria top the AIDS table, with the disease and malaria killing 300,000 Nigerians yearly.
The Global Fund is a multilateral international organisation established in 2002 by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, with support from President Olusegun Obasanjo and other African leaders to mobilise large scale funds for prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in developing countries.

So far, the Global Fund has approved S201 million as grants to Nigeria to combat HIV/AIDS and malaria over the next five years.

Feachem said that India, South Africa and Nigeria are at the top of the AIDS table with 41 per cent of their nationals needing ARV drugs.

Feachem further said that: " HIV/AIDS and malaria are killing about 300,000 Nigerians. We are very concerned about this. This is part of the reasons why I am here. I had a 110 minutes talk with President Obasanjo on Friday last week on how best the Global Fund can assist Nigeria. Nigeria has successfully completed five programmes which will be sponsored by the Global Fund with about S200 million - three on HIV/AIDS and two on malaria."
He added that the fund had budgeted $8 billion for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, with 60 percent of the money going to Africa.

Feachem said that Nigeria has the highest compliance to AIDS drug in Africa and Global Fund had developed strategies against drug resistance.

" The goal of Global Fund is to minimise drug resistance and slow down the pace with two strategies. First, is by using multi-drug therapy and encouraging compliance by helping the patient to take the drugs everyday. We have good data from Botswana and South Africa, but compliance to AIDS drugs in Nigeria is the highest in Africa."
Lambo had told reporters late on Wednesday after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja that: "Council today decided that we should scale-up the treatment to 100,000 HIV-positive patients this year,"