The Network of People Living with HIV and AIDS in Nigeria has raised an emergency alarm over a critical and worsening shortage of tuberculosis medicines, diagnostics, and related commodities at the majority of health facilities it monitored, warning that Nigeria was at risk of a significant spike in TB cases and deaths if the government failed to immediately treat the stockouts as the public health crisis they represented.
NEPWHAN National Coordinator Abdulkadir Ibrahim said data for the first quarter of 2026 showed that 64.2 percent of monitored facilities reported running out of at least one essential TB commodity, with 52.2 percent of facilities specifically reporting shortages of GeneXpert cartridges and sputum collection materials, which were foundational to diagnosing the disease at all.
He said the situation was particularly dangerous for people living with HIV, who faced significantly higher risk of developing TB and for whom interruptions in TB diagnosis and treatment rapidly increased illness and death rates while simultaneously undermining the national response to the HIV epidemic. He said 43 percent of patients interviewed by the network reported being asked to return for commodities that were not available at their facilities.
Ibrahim said the group was calling on the federal government to immediately declare the stockout situation a public health emergency requiring urgent intervention, release adequate funds without delay for procurement and distribution of essential TB medicines and diagnostics, fulfil all outstanding counterpart funding commitments to TB programs, and establish sustainable domestic financing mechanisms that would prevent future stockouts rather than managing successive crises reactively.
AIDS Healthcare Foundation representative Steven Aborishade called for the creation of a dedicated TB Special Fund to protect the gains Nigeria had made in reducing both HIV and tuberculosis prevalence, warning that commodity stockouts of this scale and duration could reverse years of hard-won progress in both disease areas.
