Nigeria’s tiny health budget is insufficient to effectively tackle challenges so says Bill Gates
US billionaire and Chair of the Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, has raised concerns about Nigeria’s health budget, describing it as too small to effectively address the country’s health challenges.
Speaking to journalists yesterday in Lagos during the inaugural Goalkeepers event by the Gates Foundation in Nigeria, Gates highlighted the pressure that health budgets are under, especially with the ongoing aid cuts.
He stated, “There will be less money for health in Nigeria next year than this year.”
Gates pointed out that the inadequate funding partly explains why Nigeria has the world’s second-highest rates of maternal and child mortality.
He explained, “The amount of money Nigeria spends on healthcare is very, very small. So I don’t know why you would have expected that number to go down. If a mother delivers at home, there are certain complications that you can’t solve.”
He elaborated on the challenges faced in northern Nigeria, saying, “What countries like India do is that they drive delivery into centres where they can give C-sections, but that takes money.”
“So in northern Nigeria, about half the births are at home, and even the ones that aren’t at home, many of those centres can’t do C-sections. So, unfortunately, you’re going to have a maternal mortality problem because of that.”
The Gates Foundation is working on affordable technologies such as an ultrasound scanning device to identify high-risk deliveries.
Gates said, “So the 10 per cent it identifies as high-risk, hopefully you can take them on to a medical facility, even though that might not be easy, and the other 90 per cent you can stay in the community.”
He also highlighted an effective bleeding intervention trial, noting, “Our bleeding intervention, where we had a trial that was so impactful that it was stopped early.”
“There’s actually an amazing doctor at the hospital who ran that study, and it is just an incredible thing because this is cheap.”
Gates warned that in almost every African country, reductions in funding would result in a significant rise in deaths.
He emphasized the foundation’s commitment to ensuring children born in Nigeria have equal opportunities as those in the richest countries, saying, “I think we can make a lot of progress, even though in the near term, it’s an awful situation that the aid budgets are being cut significantly, and in some cases without any sort of warning at all. And that’s tragic.”
He called for a reduction in aid cuts or their restoration, adding, “I will advocate that the cuts be minimised or that we get them restored when we can. But, you know, I won’t be able to get them.”
Responding to whether the Gates Foundation can fill the funding gap caused by US aid cuts, Gates said, “There’s nobody who can match that U.S. government money. And the European money is all coming down. We have, like, a 40% decrease from Germany, from the U.K. In their case, it’s less ideological and more to do with just getting money for Ukraine or ageing society.”
He clarified the foundation’s financial limitations, stating, “Well, the problem with the Gates Foundation is that we don’t have some special bucket of money. We spend more every year, and all my money will be spent.”
“And so no matter what the other people do, it’s the same amount of money. If they increase, I’ll still spend my money. If they disappear, I’ll still spend my money. So my money is not extra money.”
Gates noted that Nigeria managed to mobilize an additional $200 million, but warned, “that’s not anywhere close to the money that’s disappearing.”
“And you’re yet to see what happens when UNICEF gets cut, and Gavi gets cut, and Global Fund gets cut. So people don’t like speaking up about it, but this is terrible.”
