Stakeholders address barriers to accessing HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria services

Stakeholders in the health sector have commenced the review of the draft Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) and Community Systems Strengthening (CSS) frameworks to address barriers to accessing HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (ATM) and other health services.

Speaking at the stakeholders’ engagement meeting in Abuja, National Coordinator of the Civil Society in Malaria Control, Immunization, and Nutrition (ACOMIN), Ayo Ipinmoye, lamented that diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV are community-based, and people are not mobilised to be actively involved in the effort to eliminate them.

Ipinmoye stressed the need for local resource mobilisation from the government and private sector businesses to increase funding for healthcare services to reduce dependency on foreign assistance, especially given the recent suspension of some grants by the United States.

He said: “We are engaging with governments across Africa to invest more in the health of their people. Realistically, the world cannot continue to wait for the United States and a few countries to pay for the health of their citizens. The governments of different countries in Africa, including Nigeria should invest more to reduce the disease burden on poorer nations.”

The National Coordinator noted that though the US government has clarified that its recent policy pronouncement on the suspension of grants in aid to countries does not include health and other life-saving interventions, Nigeria should begin to look inward for alternative funding from local sources.

He said: “If that policy were not to be amended to continue funding HIV, malaria, TB, particularly in the poorer countries of the world, it would have been a big disaster.

“For instance, the ARVs for people living with HIV, the ACTs which the United States government has been supplying Nigeria and other countries have been exempted from the ban. So, people will continue to have access to life-saving medicines that are being funded by the US government.”

Ipinmoye said the Community Engagement Strategic Initiative (CE-SI) is designed to enhance meaningful participation and communities in national HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis responses.

According to him, Communities, Rights, and Gender, (CRG) interventions aim to ensure that country responses and programmes on HIV, TB, and malaria are community-focused, human rights-based, and gender transformative.

Ipinmoye emphasised that the promotion of CRG is based on evidence that for HIV, TB, and/or malaria interventions to be effective, communities, human rights, and gender should be a central part of the response to these diseases.

He explained that the CE SI projects ensure long-term capacity strengthening of the malaria community and civil society organisations at the country levels, ensure that populations at risk of malaria or underserved by malaria interventions understand the Global Fund mandate, strategy, model of work, grant life cycle, and relevant country-level processes and mechanisms include National Strategic Plans (NSP) and Country Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMS).

Ipinmoye said that the framework being developed will clearly delineate the roles of different stakeholders and systems, adding that the collaboration with other relevant partners ensures the quality of service for ATMs across the selected states.

He said: “ACOMIN engaged 10 non-governmental organizations to ensure the effective implementation of this project at the community level. The project is being implemented in 10 states, cutting across all six geo-political zones of the country such as Adamawa, Anambra, Delta, Enugu, Kebbi, Kwara, Niger, Ogun, Ondo and Oyo states. In each of the states the NGOs worked in three councils, cutting across the three senatorial zones.”