Chairman of the Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, has said the amount spent by the government of Nigeria on its healthcare sector is “too small” to tackle endemic challenges.
Speaking at a media roundtable,, Gates said high maternal and child mortality rates will not go.down if healthcare investments are not ramped up.
The renowned philanthropist said he had spoken to President Bola Tinubu about the need to increase the country’s health budget.
According to Gates, while he understands that the government faces many tradeoffs in public expenditure, boosting investments in healthcare are crucial.
“Well, the amount of money Nigeria spends on health care is very, very small,” he said.
“I don’t know why you would have expected that number (referring to maternal mortality) to go down.
“If a mother delivers at home, there are certain complications that you can’t solve. So what countries like India do is they drive delivery into centres where they can give C-sections. But that takes money.”
Asked whether the Gates foundation will plug the health funding gap left by the United States, he said no organisation can match the financial contribution of the US government to global health.
“The problem with the Gates Foundation is we don’t have some special bucket of money,” he said.
“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.
“There’s a few things where they left medicines in the warehouse or they cut off a medical trial in the middle where we take our money and we shift it to help out.
“There’s nobody who can match that US government money. And the European money is all coming down. We have like a 40% decrease from Germany and the UK.
“In their case, it’s less ideological and more to do with just getting money for Ukraine or an aging society.
“I’m very upset about it. We’ll have more HIV deaths, malaria deaths, and maternal deaths. There’s just no denying that that money was being well spent. And there’s no alternate source that matches up to what was available.”
