The CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Mark Suzman, has stated that addressing poverty and malaria in Nigeria will take years of sustained effort, despite recent progress by the Nigerian government in the healthcare sector.
Speaking to TheCable in New York on Tuesday, ahead of the Foundation’s annual Goalkeepers event, Suzman acknowledged Nigeria’s significant challenges but commended the country’s current leadership for making bold moves to improve public health.
According to him, “Nigeria’s size means it always, by numbers, makes a material difference to both global and certainly Africa-wide statistics.”
His remarks come at a time when the current Nigerian administration, under President Bola Tinubu, has signaled an intent to improve healthcare financing and delivery.
“In the global statistics, there are more very poor people in Nigeria than in any other country on the planet right now, people living on less than $2 a day. And as you say, whether it’s malaria incidents, whether it’s the number of unvaccinated children, there are significant challenges in Nigeria, but at the same time, Nigeria has also made very important progress in several key areas,” he said.
“The current government, especially in the area of health, Minister Pate has been a longstanding strong partner of the Foundation. And again, I want to stress that we work in alignment with the national priorities set by the government of Nigeria, but he has prioritised areas like vaccination, like a malaria campaign.
“We work with countries across South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa [on] how they can increase their domestic resource mobilisation, and then within those domestic resources, maximise the investments in what we call the human capital investments of health and education.
“Yeah, I would agree that I think we have a strong partnership with the government of Nigeria. And I think Nigeria is taking some strong steps in that direction, but the size of the disease burden and the poverty burden means that this is going to be a multiyear effort,” he stressed.
Responding to a question about how reducing malaria incidence increases GDP, Suzman said, “Sometimes the economic case for the benefits of health is more difficult to make or understand for politicians, because the real results, that economic boost you get, is a long-term economic boost.
“It’s not as if you do a malaria prevention now and you immediately get a pickup in GDP.
“What you do is, if you have children growing up without being subject to malaria or dying of malaria, if you get children growing up with adequate nutrition and they’re fully vaccinated and healthy, you’re growing a robust, strong workforce of the future.
“The real returns will come when those children reach adulthood. But unfortunately, political electoral cycles don’t necessarily work very well with 20-year payoffs.”.
Suzman also explained that the foundation works with countries in Africa and Asia to help increase domestic resources to drive human capital development.
Speaking about Nigeria specifically, the foundation’s CEO said, “Nigeria is also a good example of a country that’s been facing significant challenges in terms of just the overall fiscal pressures it faces.”
“It’s been diversifying its national revenue. It is now raising more non-oil-related tax revenues, but it’s still very challenging to do that. And so, that’s a broader area of discussion.”
The PUNCH
