Nigeria must move beyond endless policy meetings and take urgent, life-saving actions to prevent premature deaths and strengthen its fragile health system, experts have warned.
At the Gatefield Health Summit 2025 in Abuja on Wednesday, health advocates, policymakers, and researchers urged the government to subsidize essential drugs, expand health insurance, and incentivize local pharmaceutical production.
They warned that Nigeria’s goal of building a resilient health system will remain elusive as long as millions of people living with diabetes and other chronic diseases cannot access or afford treatment.
Gatefield Chief Executive Officer, Adewumi Emoruwa, said Nigeria’s declining life expectancy, now at just 54 years, reflects deep structural weaknesses in the health sector.
“At 27, the average Nigerian is already halfway through life. In Europe, that midpoint comes around 43, while in parts of Asia, people live almost twice as long.
“We are dying young not because we are African, but because our health systems are fragile and underfunded,” he said.
He warned that the era of donor-driven health funding was fading, urging Nigeria to strengthen domestic responses to non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.
“The most important question is, what do we need to do differently to make ourselves live longer?” he asked.
Emoruwa identified five key drivers of early deaths in Nigeria that demand urgent and sustained resilience, listing poor food quality, antimicrobial resistance, underfunding, recurrent outbreaks, and maternal mortality, if the nation’s life expectancy is to improve.
He said weak regulation had allowed the market to be flooded with sugar- and salt-laden foods, noting, “We are feeding our children diabetes. A Swiss lab found six grams of sugar in Nigerian baby cereal, while the same product in Europe had none.”
He also raised concern over the growing ineffectiveness of medicines due to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the country, attributing it to poor governance and widespread misuse of antibiotics.
Noting that medicines in Nigeria require resilience, he warned that AMR could kill up to 10 million Africans by 2050.
On health financing, Emoruwa noted that Nigeria spends just five dollars per citizen annually, compared to Kenya’s sixty-six and Europe’s four thousand five hundred.
“When a country spends so little on health, people die at 54, an age when they should still be supporting children in school, not being buried,” he said.
On maternal health, he cited reports of the death of 75,000 women during childbirth in 2023, likening it to wiping out the population of Monaco every year.
He criticized government cuts to family planning budgets by 97 percent, calling it tragic.
Emoruwa also warned against rising distrust in science, saying many Nigerians now turn to social media influencers instead of doctors.
While acknowledging some policy steps like sodium reduction and the sugar-sweetened beverages tax, he lamented slow implementation.
“Government knows what to do, but what’s missing is urgency. People’s lives must matter more than profit. If we fix our food systems and make care affordable, Nigerians can live twenty more years beyond the current life expectancy,” the Gatefield Chief said
In her virtual presentation, Dr Niti Pall, President-elect of the International Diabetes Federation, said the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of people with diabetes.
“If we want true health resilience, we must prioritize chronic diseases,” she said, urging investment in primary care, diagnostics, and access to affordable insulin.
The Federation called on governments to strengthen financing systems, warning that the cost of inaction today leads to higher hospital costs and mortality tomorrow.
Dr Omokhudu Idogho, Managing Director of the Society for Family Health, represented by Dr. Anthony Nwala, the Assistant Chief Program Delivery Officer at the organization, said donor funding was declining, stressing the need for innovation and sustainability.
“Through initiatives like SFH Access, affordable medicines for hypertension and diabetes are now available for as low as one dollar per month,” he said.
Gatefield Advocacy Lead, Shirley Ewang, recalled how her organization pushed for the sugar tax in 2021 to reduce sugar consumption and fund diabetes care.
However, she lamented that inflation and industry resistance have weakened its impact, leaving many unable to afford insulin.
Kafayat Alawode, Program Director at DGI Consult, while presenting a Gatefield-funded study, said inflation, rising from 11 percent in 2018 to 34 percent in 2024, had sharply increased medical and pharmaceutical costs.
“Diabetes, once seen as a disease of affluence, is now growing rapidly in low- and middle-income countries like Nigeria,” she noted.
A new study revealed that between 2012 and 2024, insulin and Lipophage prices rose by more than 200 percent, pushing millions into financial distress.
Many patients now spend over 10 percent of their income on diabetes care, which the World Health Organization classifies as catastrophic health expenditure.
According to Alawode, some patients skip doses or rely on social media fundraising to survive. “If the rich are crying, imagine what the poor are doing—they cry the most,” she said.
The health advocates agreed that unless Nigeria strengthens local drug manufacturing, expands insurance coverage, and prioritizes prevention, millions will continue to die young. The summit continues on Thursday.