Nigeria will dramatically increase the number of AIDS sufferers receiving life-saving drugs this year after its cash-strapped AIDS programme received a financial boost, the country’s health minister said.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, launched the programme in 2002 to provide antiretroviral (ARV) drugs from India to 10,000 adults and 5,000 children at a subsidised monthly cost of 1,000 naira ($7) per patient.

But financial problems mean that only 14,000 of about 3.5 million sufferers are receiving the ARVs at the government’s 25 HIV/AIDS treatment centres.

“Council today decided that we should scale-up the treatment ... to 100,000 HIV-positive patients this year,” Health Minister Eyitayo Lambo told reporters late on Wednesday after a regular cabinet meeting in the capital Abuja.

Lambo said some of the cash to expand the programme would come from the global AIDS fund, which is providing $20 million over three years, and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Nigeria said last year it was looking to the United States and international donor agencies to provide $248 million to expand ARV therapy to 200,000 sufferers, after its AIDS programme suffered an acute shortage of ARVs.