Nigeria Launches a National Domestic Resource Mobilization and Sustainability Strategy for HIV (2021-2025)
As part of efforts to identify sustainable financing mechanisms for the control of HIV, the Government of Nigeria through the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) launched a National Domestic Resource Mobilization and Sustainability Strategy for HIV, 2021–2025 in Abuja on June 23, 2021. The strategic policy document was developed with support from the USAID-funded Health Policy Plus (HP+) project with inputs from HIV stakeholders at both the federal and state level. Deemed a game changer, the strategy will strengthen Nigeria’s HIV response and ensure that its HIV epidemiological control efforts are more effective, impactful, and sustained. The implementation of the strategy aims to raise up to USD 662 million for the 2021–2025 period.
As noted in opening remarks by NACA’s director general, Dr. Gambo Aliyu, the HIV response in Nigeria has mostly been funded by external donors—about 80 percent of the USD 6.2 billion spent to identify and treat people living with HIV between 2005 and 2018 came from international donors—an approach that is unsustainable and unreliable. Aliyu reiterated that the strategy is a call to urgent action to mobilize domestic funds to sustain treatment for patients in care and to identify and treat the additional 20 percent of persons living with HIV who are yet to commence treatment.
Sustaining HIV funding requires resource mobilisation and this resource mobilisation has always been external. It is time to mobilise resources domestically and to ensure that sustainability of HIV funding is guaranteed after epidemic control.
Dr. Gambo Aliyu
Aliyu also commended the commitment of the president to place an additional 50,000 patients living with HIV on treatment yearly and emphasised the need for multisectoral collaboration to sustain the country’s HIV response. The Chairman House Committee on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria also reiterated the commitment of the Senate to advocate for a 100 percent increase in the budget allocation to NACA for HIV program activities by 2022.
The document highlights 12 core strategies across five pillars to be implemented collaboratively by multiple stakeholders to mobilize additional resources for the HIV response, increase access to HIV services, improve HIV outcomes, and ensure sustainability of the HIV response in Nigeria. NACA, in collaboration with state agencies for the control of AIDS, the Ministry of Health, the domestic resource mobilization multisectoral technical working groups, civil society organizations, and HIV implementing partners will now work together to implement the strategy across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
The launch of the strategy was attended by representatives from PEPFAR, USAID, UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, the Federal Ministry of Health, the National Assembly, pharmaceutical manufacturing industries, civil society organizations, the Nigerian Business Coalition Against AIDS, Dangote Foundation, HIV implementing partner organizations, the Network of People with HIV/AIDS, national and state agencies for the control of AIDS, and other key stakeholders.