Measles outbreak, return to polio endemic countries list… why EU gave Nigeria €70m

In September 2000, the United Nations signed the millennium declaration – a total of eight development goals to – make leaders of all 191 UN member states committed to combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation and discrimination against women by the year 2015.

The development goals — the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achievement of universal primary education, promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women, reduction of child mortality, improvement of maternal health, fighting against HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, environmental sustainability; and development of a global partnership for development — had specific targets.

Nigeria, unfortunately, failed to meet the health and nutrition-related millennium development goals at the end of 2015.

Here are some of Nigeria’s health issues:

Currently, while Nigeria makes up two percent of the world population, 10 percent of the global burden of maternal deaths is recorded in Nigeria.

2,300 children, under the ages of five die daily from childhood diseases. With over 1, 219 children dying daily from malnutrition, one in every two child death in Nigeria is from malnutrition.

This has made Nigeria the country with the second worse statistics in terms of malnutrition.

Worse, 33 percent of the children in Nigeria are stunted as a result of malnutrition with the percentage rising to as high as over 50 percent in northern Nigeria.

In 2016, after two years of enjoying a polio free status, four wild polio virus cases were detected and Nigeria returned Nigeria to the list of polio endemic countries.

There was also an outbreak of measles recorded in the northeast, which was difficult for aid workers to access because of the crisis caused by Boko Haram insurgency.

With the teeming challenges in Nigeria’s health sector and Nigeria’s disproportionately tiny percentage — four percent–  of the entire 2017 budget spent for health, the EU’s donation of 70 million euros cannot come in timely enough to alleviate a sector in dire need.