Imagine a country where deaths from preventable causes scythes the poor and vulnerable the most but its government plans to spend, in 2019, N305 billion to keep the price of petrol low for the benefit of its poor and vulnerable citizens. That country is Nigeria where life is cheaper than a litre of fuel.
Deaths of Nigerian children from preventable diseases is the equivalent of 16 plane crashes daily. This graphic description was made by Faisal Shuaib, the Executive Director National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), at a recent event in Abuja.
Air crashes, within or outside Nigeria, with or without survivors; always make the headlines but not the 2,300 children and the 145 women who die every day from preventable diseases and causes. Shuaib notes that “one out of 10 children under five years old that dies in the world is a Nigerian, and one out of every eight Nigerian children dies before his or her fifth birthday.” These nameless and faceless women and children are the unmournables.
Nigeria wants to meet the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of less than 70 deaths per 100,000 live births. And so, to reduce the number of mothers and children dying from preventable causes by 50 percent before 2021, the government has dutifully done the expected. It has established the National Emergency Maternal and Child Health Intervention Centre, and committed one billion naira (just one quarter of the estimated four billion naira spent daily to subsidy petrol).
Continued spending on petrol subsidy while women and children die from diarrhoea, malaria and at or during birth because state-owned primary and community health centres are decrepit is a clear case of misplaced priorities. Besides, most beneficiaries of low petrol prices are car owners and anyone who can afford a taxi ride. And some of whom, by the way, never go to a private much less a public hospital to remove a tumour, fix a broken bone or get a heart operation.
Petrol subsidy, like every palliative, relives the pain (of a few) but sadly doesn’t deal with the cause. Nigeria’s real pain is the dire condition of its human development.
Nobody wants the poor and vulnerable to keep dying from avoidable causes but, alas, they won’t, at this rate, live long enough to benefit from lower-priced petrol. Being alive is one of the conditions for receiving government pension or salary. Why else is government taking the trouble to exorcise its records of ghost pensioners and workers?
Though death is certain and inevitable some of its causes are avoidable. That’s why we’re taught early on to look left and right, and left again when crossing any road; that’s why we’re advised not to drink and drive; that’s why prevention is better than cure is a popular adage.
Human life is invaluable. It is worth more than the billions spent to subsidise petrol. That money is better spent to save and educate millions of Nigerians. We commend the NPHCDA for drawing attention to the death-trap our primary healthcare system has become; reversing the trend, however, requires more than declaring a state of emergency.
Maybe we are waiting to act when the number of women and children dying every day from preventable causes and diseases is equivalent to a planeload of 550 passengers crashing every hour.
