National health budget 2017: How much dey there sef?

by Nnewuiha Obinna

 

I ran upstairs in a mad rush! The 4-year-old we were monitoring had suddenly stopped breathing. We needed to resuscitate him and needed to do it fast! We didn’t have any resuscitation bag in my ER and before I could find one for him on the third floor, the unimaginable had happened! I returned to meet his father rolling on the ground. I dropped the bag on the floor, removed my coat and retired for the night. Too broken to see any other patient.

 

When we go to buy stuff, the amount we budget for different items tells how much each item costs, how many of it we need and generally gives a good idea of what our priorities are.

 

Now here’s the thing- our nation has put down money to pay for your healthcare all through the year! It would be interesting to see how much you are entitled to and how much has been allocated to make available a healthcare system that responds to your needs. To be clear, there is a direct relationship between the overall health of a people and their socio-economic development.

 

As a background to this our talk, I want to bring up a document: “The Abuja Declaration”. Okay so about 15 years ago, African presidents gathered in Nigeria’s capital to agree that at least 15% of their country’s budget would be allocated to health care. While the declaration is not a binding law, it serves as an important policy direction for countries planning to significantly improve the health outcomes of their people.

 

How exactly are we faring with respect to this agreement that was signed in our backyard. Just to be sure, 15 years after, we are yet to hit this target! Last year’s budget was 250 billion naira with the dollar pegged at 195 naira to a dollar, thus approximating to about $1.269billion. This made up about 4.13% of our national budget a far cry from the agreed 15%. This year we see a bump in the amount allocated- it goes up to 304 billion naira, accounting for a slightly larger portion of the budget- 4.16%. However, the exchange rate isn’t exactly our friend this time- as the Dollar is now pegged at 305 naira to a dollar. Thus we basically have a lower dollar equivalent of $997million. This is a cause for concern, especially in a country that relies heavily on importation to power its healthcare system.

 

Our national budget continues to lean heavily on the side of recurrent expenditure, that is, paying salaries and overheads; as compared to building infrastructure. 83% of the country’s budget in 2017 would be spent on recurrent expenditure- thereby continuing this trend. The budget does something significant in its ‘version 2017’ though. There is an increase in the amount allocated for capital expenditure to 51billion naira, compared to about 28 billion naira from last year. How a nearly 80% increase in funding in capital expenditure leads to improved health infrastructure nationwide would be something for us all to look out for this year.

 

By the way, we don’t have all this money we plan to spend oh. There is a 2.32 trillion-naira deficit in our country’s budget which will be financed largely by borrowing. Some of that borrowed money goes to health! So what exactly would be be borrowing for:

At a glance, a total of 304 billion would be spent:

252 billion would be spent on recurrent expenditure

51 billion on capital expenditure. The rest is overhead.

 

The top 3 ‘earners’ from our budget are:

Headquarters, Federal Ministry of Health- 31 billion

 

National Primary Healthcare Development Agency: 19 billion

 

University College Hospital: 11 billion

 

Teaching hospitals

The top 3 earning teaching hospitals are:

 

University College Hospital, Ibadan- 11 billion

Federal Teaching Hospital Abakaliki- 9.8 billion

University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Enugu- 9.1 billion

 

The Lagos University Teaching Hospital, the federal teaching hospital in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic center, would get 7 billion naira for 2017.

 

Mental health

We would be committing about 4.5% of our national health budget to mental health, with the Psychiatric hospitals in Lagos and Ogun receiving a cumulative sum of about 5 billion naira.

 

Research

The National Institute for Medical Research and the National Institute for Pharmaceutical Research and Development both have a combined budget accounting for about 0.45% of our 2017 budget.

 

So there we have it… a little round up of our spending plan for 2017. What are your hopes for the 2017 health budget? Where have we gotten it right this time? Where should we have put more of our money?

Let’s know your thoughts…


Op–ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija

Nnewuihe Obinna is a medical doctor at the intersection of medicine, economics and improving the Public’s health. He is passionate about improving health through research, evidence based therapy and policy.

He currently serves on the Steering committee of the Commonwealth Youth Health Network where he holds the position of Coordinator, Research and Programs. He tweets as @ob_001. See last week’s article here.

One comment

  1. Let them continue to put the money on our,healthcare many nigerians are dyimg from cancer,hypertension,heart disease,Aids,malaria and various others

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