• Says no donor can match U.S. govt

The Chair, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, has described Nigeria’s health budget as too little to tackle the health challenges facing the country. He also believes that no philanthropist can match the United States government in terms of donations.
 
According to him, the health budget would be under incredible pressure, particularly with the aid cuts, adding that there will be less money for health in Nigeria next year than this year.
 
In an interview with journalists yesterday, in Lagos at the sideline of the first-ever Goalkeepers event by the Gates Foundation in Nigeria, the U.S. billionaire observed that the low funding for health was part of the reasons Nigeria has the second highest maternal and child mortality rate in the world.
 
He said: “The amount of money Nigeria spends on healthcare is very small. So, I don’t know why you would have expected that number to go down. If a woman is delivered at home, there are certain complications that you can’t solve.
 
“Countries like India drive delivery into centres where they can give Caesarean Section, but that takes money. So, in northern Nigeria, about half the births are at home; even the ones that aren’t at home, many of those centres can’t do C-sections. So, unfortunately, you’re going to have a maternal mortality problem because of that.”  
 
Gates noted that the foundation was creating low-cost tools like an ultrasound scanning device that will identify which deliveries were going to be high-risk.  
 
On whether the Foundation is willing to bridge the funding gap created by the U.S. aid cuts in Nigeria, Gates said: “Nobody can match that U.S. government money. And the European money is all coming down. We have, like, 40 per cent decrease from Germany, from the U.K. In their case, it’s less ideological and more to do with just getting money for Ukraine or an ageing society.
 
“The problem with the Gates Foundation is that we don’t have some special bucket of money. We spend more every year, and all my money will be spent. 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.
 
“Nigeria mobilised an extra $200 million, but that’s not anywhere close to the money that’s disappearing. And you’re yet to see what happens when the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Gavi and Global Fund get cuts. So, people don’t like speaking up about it, but this is terrible.” The Microsoft founder pointed out that in almost every African country, there would be less money, which would lead to an increase in deaths. 

The foundation, he stated, has a very aggressive goal to ensure that children born in Nigeria have equal opportunity with a child born in the richest country in the world.