Ogun Pledges To Support War Against HIV/AIDS, Related Diseases

GOVERNOR Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun has said the state government would collaborate with relevant stakeholders in the country to reduce to the barest minimum, the scourge of HIV/AIDS and other related diseases.He spoke in Abeokuta while receiving a delegation of the National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA), led by its Director-General, Prof. John Idoko, which paid him an advocacy visit in his office.Amosun said the issue of health was very important to his administration and called for collective efforts by all the tiers of government to curb the dreadful disease.He expressed satisfaction with the decentralization policy of the health care delivery system of the agency, saying it would help in touching the lives of the masses.He disclosed that Ogun was already collaborating with Lagos in order to improve the health care system for the people in the border towns and urged NACA to focus more attention on preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS rather than curing it.He assured the team that government would facilitate all the procedures aimed at changing the State Action Committee on AIDS (SACA) to the State Agency for the Control of AIDS so as to be more alive to its responsibilities.Speaking earlier, the Director-General of NACA, Prof. Idoko, commended the state government for its welfare programmes in the health sector and pledged that NACA would collaborate to improve the health of the people.He disclosed that 'about 70,000 children in Nigeria are born with HIV positive status,' adding that 'tuberculosis and malaria are prevalent among pregnant women.'Idoko appealed to all levels of government to assist the agency in its fight against
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