NIGERIA'S National Agency for the Control of Aids (Naca) has discovered and identified about 3,500 male sex workers in the Abuja city centre who it says are responsible for spreading the virus across the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). 

Naca officials said they are worried by these figures because over 60% of these men are married, raising the concern of spouse HIV transmission. At its maiden lecture yesterday to mark this year’s World Aids Day in Abuja, Naca said it is now targeting hotspots in its drive to end the HIV epidemic. 

At the lecture, Professor John Idoko, Naca's director-general, launched a three-pronged strategy for fighting HIV/Aids, under the theme Strategies for Ending Aids in Nigeria by 2030. He added that the agency is developing interventions to be able to reduce contact between infected and uninfected persons. 

Professor Idoko said: “Within the Federal Capital Territory, we found that if we focus our resources in three council areas of Gwagwalada, Bwari and Abuja Municipal, we would have covered a greater population of persons with HIV within the area.” 

In his response, Professor James Blanchard, the director of Global Health at the University of Manitoba, Canada said that even with modern technologies, HIV prevention is a very complex thing because there are social factors that need to be addressed like political commitment and advocacy, laws and labour policies, community mobilisation and a host of other things. He added that Nigeria is a very large and complex country and reaching those who need to receive the treatment requires that the country focuses on the right environment and high risk areas. 

Professor Blanchard said: “We need to match our HIV interventions with the population of HIV distribution. We need to get down to the micro level to know where we put our resources as we have the sex workers, persons who inject drugs and men who have sex with men." 

He explained that the Naca survey has identified eight priority states in Nigeria because HIV is not evenly distributed adding that there are very large populations in parts of FCT, Lagos, Nasarawa and Benue. Among other things, Naca found that there is substantial risk behaviour in rural areas. 

“We found that in Benue, 60% of men who visited bars, restaurants and hotels were seeking sexual partners while 12% of the females were seeking sexual partners and 9% of those who patronise these places are female sex workers. In Benue, 30% of the unmarried men had visited a worker and 18% had visited a sex worker within the last one month but this was not the same across the state as some places were high risk areas,” Professor Blanchard added