Nigeria is to launch an emergency action plan against AIDS this week, Health Minister Alphonsus Nwosu said Sunday.
"Since AIDS has constituted itself to an extraordinary emergency problem, Nigeria has decided to launch an extraordinary emergency response to combat it," the minister told reporters here.
He said the action plan would be launched Friday at the close of a two-day international summit on AIDS jointly organized by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Nigerian government.
The summit opening in Abuja on Thursday will be attended by some 47 African heads of state.
Africa is home to 25.3 million of the 36.1 million people infected worldwide with the HIV virus which causes AIDS, according to year-end statistics from 2000.
In 16 countries on the continent, more than one adult in 10 is HIV-positive; in Botswana, one in three is infected.
Some 5.4 percent of the adult population in Nigeria is HIV positive, according to the latest survey published in December 1999.
Nigeria has a population of around 120 million – ABUJA (AFP)
