Ali Pate: Nigeria must prioritise investment in health, encourage domestic production of vaccines

Ali Pate, a ministerial nominee, says Nigeria must prioritise investment in health and encourage domestic production of vaccines.

The medical doctor was supposed to start his appointment as the chief executive officer (CEO) of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) before he was nominated for a ministerial position by President Bola Tinubu.

Pati, a former minister of state for health, is an American board-certified medical doctor in both internal medicine and infectious diseases.

He also holds an MBA (health sector concentration) from Duke University USA and a master’s in health system management from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom.

Speaking during his screening by the senate on Wednesday, Pate said financing is critical to the prioritisation of health in Nigeria.

He said the government must take advantage of the economic value of health and stop importing drugs and medical appliances that could be produced in the country with proper investment.

“How do we prioritise the health of our people except through the resource we allocate to it? Financing is the core of prioritising health in Nigeria. There is a governance side and there is a financing side,” he said.

“The prioritisation of health in Nigeria has been suboptimal. The total government expenditure on health is about $14 a person with huge variation. 

“In Nigeria, much of spending on health is from families and out of pockets and the government puts $12 to $14 per person which is roughly one percent of the GDP.

“The Niger Republic has fewer resources than us but they allocated more than double what we allocated in terms of their health spending revenue to their GDP.  That’s an indication of prioritisation.

“Domestic financing represents the prioritisation that we give to health but we are not spending enough because the revenue is limited.

“Without doing it, inadvertently we are outsourcing the prioritisation of health to external actors. It is important to safeguard the finance of essential things like vaccines.

“It is unfortunate that part of this country has the worst immunisation in the world. So, I’m pleading that going forward, we prioritise investment in health and invest in the things that can prevent diseases and protect our children.

“There is a scope for medical industrialisation that we have not attended to — 60 to 70 percent of our generics, the drugs that we take, are imported from countries that are just like us. 

“There is an economic value in that sector that we have not optimised. Same thing with devices and service delivery. Putting all these together, the consensus should be to prioritise health and translate that prioritisation into better investment through the budget process.”