Vice President Kashim Shettima wants African countries to build resilient health sectors and shift the focus from reliance on foreign aid to self-sufficiency.

Shettima made the call on Friday at a high-level side event on “Building Africa’s Health Security Sovereignty,” on the margins of the 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“Nigeria stands ready to collaborate with every member state of our Union to make health security sovereignty measurable in factories commissioned, laboratories accredited, health workers trained, counterfeit markets dismantled, and insurance coverage expanded,” Shettima, who represented President Bola Tinubu, at this year’s AU Summit, said, according to a statement from his media aide, Stanley Nkwocha.

“When history reflects on this generation of African leadership, may it record that when confronted with vulnerability, we chose capacity; when confronted with dependence, we chose dignity; and when confronted with uncertainty, we chose cooperation. And in choosing cooperation, we built a continent that could heal itself,” he said.

The former Borno State governor cautioned against the consequences of vulnerability, citing global health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, when the world turned inward, Africa waited, improvised, and negotiated for rationed vaccines and scarce oxygen.

“Health security is national security, and in an interconnected continent, national security is continental security. A virus, as we have witnessed, does not carry a passport. A counterfeit medicine does not respect a border. A pandemic does not wait for bureaucracy,” he said.

Shettima outlined measures being adopted by Nigeria to tackle health challenges, saying the nation is currently treating health matters with every seriousness under the leadership of Tinubu.

He pointed out that the nation is focusing on boosting local manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, increasing domestic health financing, and strengthening regulatory oversight through various initiatives such as the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative and Presidential Initiative to Unlock the Healthcare Value Chain (PIPUHVAC).

“Nigeria has approached this challenge with seriousness under the leadership of His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. In December 2023, we launched the Nigeria Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative, securing over 2.2 billion dollars in health-sector commitments anchored in measurable outcomes.

“The initiative set out to renovate and revitalise more than 17,000 primary health care centres across our federation, to train 120,000 frontline health workers, and to expand health insurance coverage within three years through reforms driven by the National Health Insurance Authority. We prioritise this because we believe that sovereignty must rest on financial protection as much as on infrastructure.”

The Vice President attributed Nigeria’s success in responding swiftly to disease outbreaks that had overwhelmed the world to strengthening epidemic intelligence and emergency preparedness.

He said because time is currency in public health, the country is enhancing laboratory networks, expanding genomic surveillance, and reinforcing coordination at its emergency operations centres through the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

Noting that sovereignty without standards amounts to exposure to risk, Senator Shettima said Nigeria has intensified regulatory oversight under the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC).

Shettima said that the nation is “upgrading quality-control laboratories, tightening enforcement against substandard and falsified medicines, and streamlining processes for compliant manufacturers.” (Channels TV)

•Vice President Kashim Shettima at the margins of the ongoing 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union (AU) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Photo: X@stanleynkwocha