Abuja: The National Agency for the Control of AIDS (NACA) has expressed concern over the unauthorised circulation of a publication presenting state-by-state HIV figures for January to March 2026. The agency said the publication was shared across social media platforms nationwide without official approval or verification.
According to News Agency of Nigeria, Dr. Temitope Ilori, Director-General of NACA, stated in a Wednesday announcement in Abuja that the publication failed to follow established procedures for requesting, validating, and disseminating HIV-related data. She emphasized that the document remained unauthorised due to the lack of adherence to these protocols.
Ilori highlighted that HIV data could not be independently extracted and published without due process, noting that clearly defined protocols existed to ensure proper analysis, contextualisation, and accurate communication to the public. She warned that ignoring these procedures could lead to misinterpretation and misuse of sensitive public health information, potentially undermining public confidence in national HIV response systems.
She also noted that although the figures seemed sourced from the National Data Repository dashboard, they only reflected HIV positivity from routine health facility testing and did not represent the true burden of HIV. According to her, HIV positivity alone is not a valid measure of HIV prevalence or incidence and cannot be used to determine or rank the burden of the disease across states.
Ilori pointed out that variations in such figures might be influenced by factors including population size, differences in the scale and intensity of testing programmes, as well as disparities in data reporting completeness and timeliness. She reiterated that any comparison or ranking of states based solely on these figures is misleading, inaccurate, and invalid within accepted public health data interpretation standards.
Furthermore, she underscored that the responsibility for generating, interpreting, and disseminating HIV data and related estimates rested strictly with authorised government health institutions with the requisite mandate and technical expertise. Ilori advised members of the public and organisations seeking HIV-related data to adhere strictly to due process by submitting formal requests through official channels for accurate information access.