Grace Amodu was 7 years old when she found out she was living with HIV. Until then she had been told to take pills daily for malaria or for headaches but she grew tired of it. Screaming and kicking she told her brother that she was going to stop taking her medicine and that she wanted answers. Her mother took her aside and explained that she was born with HIV and that the treatment would keep her healthy like other kids.
She remembers crying a lot and refusing to leave the house.
To keep her from spiraling out of control her mom encouraged her to join a support group, which she says turned her life around.
As she proudly says she has two children who are both free of HIV. Taking her medication at the same time every day throughout her pregnancy and afterwards meant she was not going to transmit HIV to her babies. "When you take medicine it suppresses the virus and even though I feared my children may have HIV they both tested negative."
She credits International Community of Women Living with HIV (ICW) Nigeria chapter for giving her hope and confidence.
"ICW was like a backbone, they were there for me like the colleagues, everyone around was standing for me, even the boss, Assumpta Reginald, was like a mother figure to me," Ms Amodu said. "She held me by the hand telling me that, 'You can do this and you can become a better person.'
As a result, Ms Amodu has become an HIV advocate and a community pharmacist.
"We go to the hospital and get medicine for people and give them to patients who are maybe not able to access their drugs because they have no transport fare or they are far away or due to the stigma in the hospital they don't want to come to have nurses and doctors shout at them so we take these drugs down to their doorstep and give it to them," she explained.
More than 90% of people living in Nigeria are on antiretroviral medicine but stigma and discrimination are still rampant.
For Ms Amodu the solution is simple. Give people the right information about HIV to break the cycle.
"We need to make people understand that you being HIV positive is not making you less of a human, you are also a human being and you deserve equal rights," the 28-year-old said.
Stella Ebeh knows all about stigma. She started volunteering in 2004 helping people living with HIV like herself. Then she started working in a health center and became a public health officer. Over the years Ms Ebeh said she has cared for more than 7000 patients and also became a mentor-mother (giving HIV advice to pregnant women and counselling), and an anti-stigma ambassador.
She is very proud of overcoming stigma and as she called it, "walking on it," but despairs that she is still not a full-time staff member. People living with HIV are very capable and yet we are often overlooked she said, adding, "I work like an elephant but eat like a rat."
Patients pour in and out of the Marabara health centre on the outskirts of Abuja all day. Ms Ebeh goes from one person to another. She lingers a while with a pregnant woman who also prepares lunch on the premises, Ngozi Blessing.
Ms Ebeh insists on pregnant women taking all the precautions they can to give birth to healthy babies. Her husband and their five children are all HIV negative. Sadly, in Nigeria this is an exception.
Vertical transmission is 25% in the country - that is when a mother passes on the virus to her child during pregnancy or breastfeeding- a record high in the region.
UNAIDS Country Director Leopold Zekeng says this is unacceptable. For him it is a demonstration of the inequalities in terms of access to services.
"Two thirds of the 8 million women who get pregnant every year in Nigeria do not have access to PMTCT (prevention between mother to child transmission of HIV) services during ante-natal care," he said.
This is why Nigeria and UN organizations along with other partners are spearheading an effort to end AIDS in children.
Dr Akudo Takpeazu, Director and National Coordinator, National AIDS and STDs Control Programme (NASCP) said that in the last 2 years they have done an enormous amount of work first trying to get a mapping to understand where all the women are having babies and where they receive ante-natal care if at all.
"A lot of them are in birth homes, they go to traditional birth attendants and many deliver at home and receive services at home and so we have a got new strategy which aims to find them where they are, ensure that they are treated, ensure that we can find them first, ensure that we can test them, link them into treatment and count every single one that has gained access to care," she said.
In other words, find all, test all, treat all and report all which happens to be Nigeria's slogan encapsulating their strategy.
Once that vertical transmission tap, as she called it, is closed, then there will be a smaller pool of children to look after regarding treatment. Dr Takpeazu said Nigeria intends to put in place an acceleration plan to have more children and adolescents on treatment and push for them to stay on treatment.
For Toyin Chukwuduzie, Director of Education as a Vaccine (EVA), HIV is one part of a larger equation.
"We see the number of unintended pregnancies, we see the burden of HIV especially among adolescent girls, we also see the sexual and gender based violence happening in our society so these things are in existence, these things are happening, yet adolescents and young people don't have the information they need to make decisions whether we are talking about schools, whether we are talking about health facilities or even in the homes where there are other adults so there are huge gaps," she said.
The 35-year-old works with young people to fill those education gaps and build support. She is convinced that a main driver of these gaping holes are inequalities, one in particular.
"I believe gender inequality is the root cause of many other inequalities so if had a magic wand gender inequality would be the one I would address the first because it's key," she said. "Addressing gender inequality is key to unlocking potential, potential of women and girls everywhere in this country."
Hammering in her point, she added that despite everyone stressing the fact that young people are the force of the future Ms Chukwudize said, "If you are not providing that safe environment, if they are not healthy, if their dreams and aspirations are thrown off the path, how do they become the future that we want to see."
