Nigeria crude death rate declines, ranks 16th in the world
Nigeria has been ranked 16th in the world following its decline in its crude death rate from 12.46 in 2016 to 12.16 in 2017.
This figure places Nigeria at 2.38% lower than its 12.77% in 2015. A figure that is close to Lesotho and Estonia as compared to Bulgaria which is at the top of the ranking with a crude death rate of 15.17% according World Data Atlas).
Crude death rate indicates the number of death occurring among the population of a given geographical area during a given year, per 1,000 mid-year total population of the given geographical area during the same year, says World Health organisation (WHO).
The United Nation Populations Division revealed that Nigeria’s crude death was peaked in 1960 with a maximum value of 26.18 and a minimum value of 12.70 in 2015.
According to WHO report, more than half of deaths recorded in Africa are currently due to malaria, and the disease kills more than 400,000 people annually. One child dies from Malaria every two minutes and a vast majority are young children in Sub-Saharan Africa; especially in Nigeria and Democratic Republic Of Congo (DRC).
In 2015, 90% of malaria cases and 92% of malaria deaths occurred in Africa. WHO estimates that there were 212 million new cases of Malaria in 2015 worldwide and 182 million Nigerians are at risk of an infection.
Olugbenga Shotonwa, a senior medical officer at Apapa General Hospital, said “there has been an increased attention by the government in tackling crude death rate such as the improvement of good environmental and sanitary condition, provision of improved health care medical facilities, distribution of free mosquito nets and so on vis-à-vis have helped to save life and poverty”. He said.
Government expenditure on health in 2015 and 2016 was N300 billion and N250 billion respectively. In 2017, of the N7.44 trillion budget expenditure, only about 4.17 percent was allocated to the health sector. A sector that is unarguably one of the most critical sectors that drive other sectors of a country as only healthy people can plan for security, development and economics advancement.
For Dim Victor, a Health Economist from University of Benin said countries all over the world are moving faster when it comes to health care delivery for example, the United States of America initiated a health care bill that can cover a large majority of its citizens. In his words, “The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) don’t cater for larger percentage of the population.”
“The percentage of health care expenditure to GDP in Nigeria is not up to 5% as the WHO during the BAMACO initiative instructed countries of the world that their health care expenditure to GDP be up to 13%. This is because an improvement in a country’s health care will result in an improvement in the health of its citizens which in turn will improve productivity as there is a link between health and economic performance” He argued.
Furthermore, the increase in health care expenditure compared to other sectors is nothing to write about especially as doctor to patient ratio is low. Thus, we see a lot of brain drain, a situation whereby we have so many of our experts in the health sector practicing in other countries of the world.
Despite all the government agencies that have been established to tackle health related issues, Nigeria is still faced with a lot of health maladies such as high mortality rate, low life expectancy rate, and a high maternal mortality rate.
Funding of the health sector has really been the major challenge. For Oluniyi Olatunde, a medical practitioner with Araba specialist hospital, “This country doesn’t value human life is the reason why investment in the health sector is low. The last budget shows that the health care sector is not meeting up to WHO standard in terms of funding. The health care sector should have about 30% of the budget but this is not happening. Hence, we shouldn’t expect an improvement with such a very low budget.” Oluniyi stated.
He added that corruption has been a big problem and even the limited funds are not being channelled properly as funds allocated for capital projects do not get to the contractors that carry out this project.
Several consumer goods companies have however seen this worrisome situation and have decided to play a role in reducing this incidence. Such roles include the production of mosquito repellent creams, flits, importation of mosquito nets, insecticides and so on.
“The demand for insecticides has increased” said a business woman who preferred to remain anonymous. According to her, “I sell more insecticides than any other item that I have in my shop and this I feel is as a result of the poor supply of electricity that is currently faced in the country and people tend to see this measure as an easier way to remedy the situation to keep mosquitoes and the likes away.”
However, Nigeria is yet to find solutions to its health challenges, like the incessant outbreaks of Lassa fever, high maternal and child deaths, poor primary health facilities, lack of functioning medical equipments, malnutrition, poor health emergency responses, among others.
Michael Ani