The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has disbursed over N83.9 billion to pharmaceutical companies, healthcare practitioners and health projects across the country as part of its efforts to cushion the effect of COVID-19 on the health sector.
Governor of the apex bank, Godwin Emefiele, revealed this while speaking at the premier of ‘Unmasked’, a documentary on Nigeria’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Lagos.
Emefiele stressed the need to reduce out-of-pocket expenses and increase investment opportunities in the healthcare sector by increasing the base of families and individuals covered under existing health insurance schemes.
Emefiele who was represented by the director, Corporate Communications Department of the CBN, Osita Nwasinobi, observed that building a robust healthcare infrastructure is vital from a security perspective.
He said, “As a result, we focused our interventions in the health care sector on three areas; Building the capacity of our healthcare institutions supporting the domestic manufacturing of drugs by businesses, and providing grants to researchers in the medical field, in order to encourage them to develop breakthrough innovations that would address health challenges faced by Nigerians.
“In this regard we disbursed over N83.9 billion in loans to pharmaceutical companies and healthcare practitioners, which is supporting 26 pharmaceutical and 56 medical projects across the country.
“We also initiated the Healthcare Sector Research and Development Intervention Grant Scheme, which will aid research on solutions that could address diseases such as COVID-19, and other communicable/ non-communicable diseases. So far 5 major healthcare related research projects are being financed under this initiative.” Emefiele, however, stated that while the apex bank’s interventions have helped to improve the country’s capacity to respond to the crisis, more work needs to be done to build a more sustainable healthcare infrastructure.
According to him, the CBN realised that the steps it introduced to help support economic recovery would not yield the desired result, if the regulator did not pay significant attention to improving the capacity of the country’s healthcare system to respond to the crisis, “as well as ramp up efforts to build a sustainable healthcare infrastructure that could anticipate and respond adequately to a potential health crisis in the future.” The CBN, he said: “Disbursed over N83.9 billion in loans to pharmaceutical companies and healthcare practitioners, which is supporting 26 pharmaceutical and 56 medical projects across the country. We were also able to mobilise key stakeholders in the Nigerian economy through the CACOVID alliance, which led to the provision of over N25bn in relief materials to affected households, and the set-up of 39 isolation centers across the country. These measures helped to expand and strengthen the capacity of our healthcare institutions to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
