Nigeria is to launch an ambitious project of 19.68 billion naira (about 146 million US dollars) to provide 200, 000 AIDS patients with anti-retroviral treatment next year, Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo said Wednesday.

After a Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, Lambo told reporters that the project would be the largest in the whole of Africa and that the 200,000 patients being targeted was a large leap from the 14,000 cases currently being handled by the Nigerian government.

He disclosed that Nigeria had spent 1.5 billion naira (about 11million dollars) purchasing anti-retroviral drugs this year alone.

Meanwhile, the minister said the FEC has approved the setting up of an inter-ministerial committee that would seek ways of improving anti-retroviral treatment, how to reduce mother-to-child transmission and how to scale up the treatment of tuberculosis.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country with some 130 million people, is now one of the world's hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. So far,about 2.3 million Nigerians have died of AIDS while 3.8 million others are carriers of the HIV virus, according to the health ministry.

Nigeria currently operates 25 centers from where 14,000 people living with HIV/AIDS are accessing the drugs at a subsidized rate of 1,000 naira (about 7.41 dollars) for a month's supply.

Source: Xinhua