By Daniel Tyokua
The Federal Capital Territory Administration ,FCTA, department of public health has sensitised some communities on how to curb and test HIV/Aids among residents.
Acting secretary FCT Health and Human Services Secretariat, Dr Mohammed Kawu during FCT 2020 World Aids Day celebration in Kuchigoro and Waru areas of Abuja, said sensitisation of community residents would stop the transmission.
He urged the stakeholders to collectively work towards ending the epidemic by playing their roles well.
Kawu who was represented by the Director of Pharmacitical department, Boniface Ikwu, said “We all have a role to play in achieving the UNAIDS 90-90-90 targets by 2022”.
He said FCT has over 400 health facilities offering HIV testing services and over 400 offering prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, as well as over 400 facilities offering ART services.
However, the FCT Director Department of Public Health, Dr Josephine Okechukwu, represented by the deputy director of Disease Control, Dr Sadiq Abdulrahaman said the FCT Administration was committed to addressing issues that would result to disease outbreak.
He said the department was fully engaged in testing and collecting of samples for examination in the laboratory.
According to him, despite the impact of COVID-19 which is a global pandemic, in FCT the public health department was not leaving things to chances.
On his part, the state Aids programme coordinator for FCT, Dr Benson Udo said the programme which is being organised every first day of December was to create awareness and keep those living with HIV abreast of the issues related to them.
“HIV/Aids is true, but people are surviving it, we are capable of fighting the disease in FCT and beyond that is why we keep doing sensitization”
He explained that the week long event is succeeding in the Federal Capital Territory because of the support from it partners.
Udo said that there are other programmes that FCT Administration was promoting to tackle the menace, also free test kids were distributed to the residents.
