The Catholic Relief Services (CRS) says it has distributed 100,000 HIV self-test kits to health facilities in seven states in Nigeria through its Faith-based Action for Scaling up Testing and Treatment for the Epidemic Response (FASTER) project.

The Project Director, CRS, Dr Chizoba Mbanefo, said this at a one-day symposium on HIV Self-testing Programming (HIVST) in Nigeria.

She added that the project was implemented in partnership with the U.S. Centres for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC).

The two-year (2019 to 2021) project, Development Diaries understands, was designed to accelerate progress in paediatric HIV diagnosis and treatment in four countries – Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

In March 2019, the Nigerian government revealed a 1.4 percent HIV prevalence rate among citizens between the ages of 15 and 19.

‘Nigeria is one of the leading countries in terms of HIV burden, so the programme was fashioned to increase access for children and adolescent who have HIV’, she said.

‘To increase access for testing, for linkage to health facilities, initiation on adolescent antiretroviral therapy (ART) and to ensure viral suppression.

‘We also work with community volunteers in the [hard-to-reach] communities in terms of how to guide adolescents and their parents on how to use the self-test kit’.

Also speaking, Senior Scientific Officer at the Department of National AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), Federal Ministry of Health, Sabina Aiki, said that it was very imperative for Nigeria to review its policy on HIV self-testing.

‘The guidelines introduced in 2018 is long overdue for review, a lot of things has changed, a number of things has also come in in HIV self-testing’, Aiki said.

Source: NAN

Photo source: Stars Foundation