President Bola Tinubu is working on increasing the annual budgetary allocation to the health sector by 10 per cent.
This was disclosed by his special adviser on health, Salma Ibrahim-Anas, on Tuesday during the GateField Health Summit held at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja.
“President Bola Ahmed TInubu has taken a strong step to ensure that 10% of the Nigerian budget is allocated to health. This is to improve the health outcome of Nigeria”, she said.
She further reassured Nigerians that the President is a strong advocate on health issues and “he is committed to forging a formidable health for our citizens”.
The GateField summit strongly pushes the advocacy to tax sugar-sweetened beverages to fund Nigeria’s debilitating health care system.
The summit amplified the long-term effects of sugar-sweetened beverages intake on Nigerians and, as such, companies in the production of sweetened beverages be taxed to generate revenue for the Nigerian Healthcare system for citizens who suffer from the likes of diabetes, cancer, heart diseases, and other non-communicable diseases that are majorly caused by the intake of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB).
With over 13 million Nigerians living with diabetes and 12 million with pre-diabetes, the movement to tax and caution companies in production of SSB to create a major impact on the health sector and prevent the overflow of more health cases in the future cannot be over-emphasised.
The summit discussed how the movement could strongly impact the system by providing health finances, good governance and leadership structure, public health, increasing capacity for pharmaceuticals, partnerships, technology and, most importantly, accountability.
Despite being the fourth highest consuming soft drink company globally, Nigeria joined over 100 countries to implement the SSB tax two years ago and is only taxing 10 naira per litre on SSB, which is unable to cover the bases of the tax implementation in the first case.
