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A special committee set up the Ministry of Internal Affairs to oversee checks on the spread of HIV in prisons and the immigration services has recommended that infected convicts be released, a local newspaper reported on Thursday.
The privately-owned ‘Vanguard’ newspaper quoted Dr Hassan Labo, who
coordinates the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) control programme in the two services as saying the measure would “enable the
inmates who are infected with the disease to pass away with dignity in their places of abode”.
Labo, who made the disclosure on Wednesday while presenting a paper on management of HIV/AIDS in Nigerian para-military institutions in the capital, Abuja, said his four-member committee also planned to organise in-depth studies on the number of infected inmates and modes of transmission of the disease in the country’s prisons, the paper said.
“The findings will also provide us the baseline data for evaluation and monitoring of the efficacy of intervention strategies,” he was quoted as saying.
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