Nigeria: Double free AIDS treatment centers

Nigeria will double the number of government centers where AIDS patients can get free drugs in the next three months as part of a major drive to widen access to treatment, the government anti-AIDS agency said on Friday (January 6). Nigeria started distributing anti-retroviral drugs for free this month from 33 government health facilities, scrapping a 1,000 naira ($8) fee that patients previously had to pay for subsidized drugs. “We plan to add an additional 33 centers in the first quarter,” Babatunde Osotimehin, chairman of the National Action Committee on AIDS (NACA), said in an interview with Reuters, as reported by the New York Times.