Bill Gates Unveils about N4.9 trillion ($7 billion) Intervention For Africa

 

As the federal government searches for better funding options for the health sector, global businessman, Mr Bill Gates, has said his foundation will commit about 4.9 trillion naira ($7 billion) to Africa in the next four years to support routine immunisation in Nigeria and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in Northern Nigeria.
Also, business mogul, Alhaji Aliko Dangote has said Bill Gates and himself had been partnering with both the federal and state governments for several years, supporting the efforts at eradicating polio and improving routine immunisation, nutrition and primary healthcare in Nigeria.
They spoke at a parley with some governors under the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) at the Banquet Hall, Presidential Villa, Abuja.
In a remark, the chairman of NGF, Alhaji Abdulraman Abdulrasaq and other governors lauded the philanthropic interventions of Aliko Dangote and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations in critical areas like healthcare, education, agriculture and human capital development. 
The governors expressed readiness to further collaborate with the Dangote and Gates Foundations in the coming years.
At the event, Vice President Kashim Shettima said, “We are going to address the concerns that surround the financing of our primary healthcare system in the country.”
He said polio is one of the major primary healthcare challenges in the country and disclosed that “the proposal is to provide timely domestic financing for the procurement of vaccines, which couldn’t have come sooner, to boosting our industrial capacity to produce vaccines.”
While acknowledging the threats facing Nigeria in the area of polio, he averred that Nigeria’s three dose pentavalent vaccine coverage has improved from 33 percent in 2016 to 57 percent in 2021.