Health experts have called for increased investment in healthcare innovation, sustainable financing and stronger partnerships to improve access to quality and affordable healthcare in Nigeria.
The call was made at the 2026 Future of Health Conference organised by Nigeria Health Watch in Abuja, themed “From Innovation to Impact: The Future of Health Is Now,” where policymakers, healthcare professionals, researchers and development partners examined practical ways to translate health innovations into measurable improvements in healthcare delivery.
Speaking at the conference, the Director-General of the National Health Insurance Authority, NHIA, Dr Kelechi Ohiri, said Nigeria must take greater responsibility for financing and shaping its healthcare system amid changes in the global health landscape.
Dr Ohiri said the disruption in global health financing had made it imperative for countries to develop sustainable, locally driven solutions rather than depend on external support.
“The giant should not be lying down begging for crumbs,” he said, emphasising the need for Nigeria to determine its health priorities and develop solutions suited to the needs of its population.
He explained that the Federal Government’s health sector reform agenda was built around governance, service delivery, private-sector participation and health security, with the aim of improving coordination among stakeholders and ensuring accountability.
According to him, Nigeria’s federal structure requires effective collaboration between the federal and state governments, while the involvement of multiple actors in the health sector makes a coordinated approach essential.
“Fragmentation was no longer an option. We all had to go in the same direction,” he said, stressing the importance of government leadership, oversight and accountability in achieving sustainable healthcare reforms.
He noted that innovation should go beyond medical equipment and digital technology to include new approaches to healthcare financing, service delivery, research and institutional management.
“Reforming the health sector is messy. There are no quick solutions, and there is not going to be a big-bang innovation,” he said.
Dr Ohiri explained that Nigeria was dealing with a complex disease burden, as infectious diseases and high maternal mortality continued to affect the population alongside a growing incidence of non-communicable diseases, including hypertension and diabetes.
He said the situation required a healthcare system capable of addressing multiple health challenges while ensuring that poor and vulnerable Nigerians were not excluded from essential services.
The NHIA director-general said the authority had prioritised expanding health insurance coverage, enforcing existing mandates, improving public awareness and rebuilding confidence in the insurance system.
He stressed that health insurance must provide genuine financial protection and ensure that enrollees could access treatment without being burdened by out-of-pocket payments.
“When we say someone is covered, two things must hold. First, if I have malaria, or a pregnant woman has a complication in pregnancy and goes to a hospital, it means that if you’re covered, that thing which ails you, you should have access to care,” he said.
“It should also mean the second thing: you’re not supposed to pay money out of pockets.”
Dr Ohiri said the authority recognised that waiting for universal health insurance coverage before addressing emergency maternal healthcare needs would leave many women exposed to preventable complications and deaths.
He explained that women experiencing complications during childbirth often face delays in receiving treatment because they cannot afford hospital deposits, emergency surgery and other essential services.
To address the challenge, he said the government introduced an initiative to finance emergency obstetric care, enabling women experiencing childbirth complications to receive treatment without upfront payment.
“About 300 hospitals across the country, fully accredited, every state, and more being added daily, where any woman that has a complication in childbirth, no questions asked, the treatment will be financed and paid for by the NHIA,” he said.
He disclosed that more than 90,000 women had benefited from the initiative within the preceding year and a half, describing it as an example of how innovation in healthcare financing could improve access to life-saving services.
He added that the authority was supporting locally driven research to develop solutions tailored to Nigeria’s healthcare challenges and had identified and funded five independent researchers through a competitive process supported by the World Health Organisation.
“We made a commitment last year that we’ll begin to fund research that was context-specific and addressed our own problems,” he said.
He said the authority had also established a health technology assessment mechanism to evaluate innovative medicines, technologies and other interventions to determine their potential benefits for Nigerians.
He further emphasised the need to strengthen primary healthcare facilities and equip frontline health workers with the clinical, administrative and financial management skills required to improve service delivery.
He said the success of the reforms would ultimately be measured by their impact on patients, particularly women experiencing childbirth complications, premature infants requiring essential care and vulnerable Nigerians at risk of falling into poverty because of healthcare costs.
Also speaking, Vivianne Ihekweaze highlighted the importance of sustained conversations on healthcare reform and universal health coverage.
She said the Future of Health Conference had provided a platform for policymakers, health professionals, development partners and private-sector actors to examine challenges confronting Nigeria’s healthcare system and explore solutions.
She recalled that the conference began in 2013, with discussions centred on universal health coverage and ensuring that Nigerians could access affordable, quality healthcare without suffering financial hardship.
“At the time, the discussions were very much anchored around universal health coverage. How can we ensure that every single Nigerian, no matter who you are, has access to affordable, quality healthcare, and it does not leave you financially disadvantaged?” she said.
Ms Ihekweaze said healthcare costs remained a major concern for families, particularly when they encountered medical emergencies, and noted that conversations at the conference had evolved over the years to cover not only specific diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and polio, but also healthcare financing, service delivery, data and private-sector participation.
She also highlighted the growing role of technology in healthcare, particularly digital tools and artificial intelligence, noting that they could help improve diagnosis, expand access to services and address existing gaps.
“We as a country, and we as a continent, must take a much active role in shaping that future,” she said.
Speaking on health implementation in Africa, a senior adviser at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, Africa CDC, Erasmus Morah, said scientific breakthroughs alone would not transform healthcare without political commitment, effective leadership and the involvement of affected communities.
Drawing on his experience in Nigeria and other African countries, Mr Morah said the successful implementation of health interventions depended on translating evidence into policies and practices that respond to people’s needs.
He illustrated this with Nigeria’s progress in HIV treatment coverage, recalling that coverage was about 33 per cent in 2017 before a national survey helped revise estimates of people living with HIV.
“The Nigerian AIDS Indicator Survey showed that the estimated population of people living with HIV was about 1.8 million, rather than the previously projected 3.2 million,” he said.
He said the revised estimates helped reveal gaps in the country’s response and contributed to a change in reported treatment coverage.
Mr Morah argued that reliable data could improve decision-making, but that achieving results also required people willing to challenge established assumptions.
He also recounted his experience in Malawi, where efforts to expand HIV testing required a shift from voluntary testing and counselling to provider-initiated testing and counselling.
“Science without politics, it’s powerless. Politics without science, dangerous,” he said, urging governments, researchers and communities to work together and calling for innovations to be supported by locally accountable implementation coalitions led by committed champions.
Meanwhile, Ifeyinwa Rhodes-Vivour, founder of AfroScientric, highlighted the potential of malaria genomics to help Nigeria develop more targeted interventions.
She said conventional epidemiological approaches alone might not provide sufficient information about the genetic characteristics of malaria parasites, particularly as drug resistance threatens the effectiveness of existing treatments.
“Genomic sequencing can help researchers identify resistance patterns, track parasites and provide policymakers with evidence to guide interventions suited to different locations,” she said.
Mrs Rhodes-Vivour said research conducted by her team had identified differences in drug-resistance profiles between malaria parasites in northern and southern Nigeria, underscoring the limitations of applying a uniform approach across the country.
She said the work included a pilot study in Lagos State in 2017 and subsequent national surveys, including a second survey in 2025, with about 32,000 parasite samples collected.
She also highlighted efforts to reduce the cost of genomic sequencing and make the resulting information more accessible to policymakers through digital tools, noting that the cost had been reduced from about $150 per sample to approximately $20 to $24.
She added that the team had also developed a dashboard and an artificial intelligence-powered WhatsApp interface to help policymakers access information about malaria drug resistance.
On Lassa fever, Project Coordinator for ENABLE 1.5 Nigeria Lassa fever epidemiological study, Ms Elsie Ilori, said the study was designed to fill critical knowledge gaps about transmission at community level.
“What is happening within the community? We do not even understand the dynamics… It’s been with us for 50 years, but we do not understand it,” she said.
Ms Ilori explained that ENABLE is a cohort study that follows up a set number of people to determine how they get infected. She noted that ENABLE 1.0 followed participants for two years, while ENABLE 1.5 is running for one and a half years.
According to her, the study has helped the country know the true burden of the disease, who is infected and what symptoms to look out for, adding that the standard case definition focuses on fever, but findings show patients may not present with fever at all.
“From what we have discovered in Enable, you might not even present with fever, just tiredness, and you know what, especially for the women who go to the farm, they are tired, they feel, oh, that’s one of the things that, I mean, okay, I’m tired, it’s no cause for alarm,” she said.
“But we’ve had a case where there was no other symptoms, it was just tiredness, and because she was one of our participants that we were following up, we collected some, and it was positive. So Enable will help us to be able to look more into our policies.”
She added that the study found children are more vulnerable and is also providing data on survivors and after-effects such as sensory loss.
“Enable has helped us to know that you cannot do anything without the community… when the community is part of what you’re doing, you are able to get a lot. And they will even tell you what they want or how to go about it,” she said.
In the same vein, Senior Manager, Resource Mobilization at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, CEPI, Dr Chidubem Ogwulu, said CEPI was created to translate scientific innovation into real public health impact.
“To translate information into real public health impacts. That is fundamentally where CEPI exists. CEPI was established to address a critical gap in global health security, which is insufficient investment in vaccines against certain threats, particularly diseases where commercial incentives are limited,” he said.
He said CEPI brings together governments, philanthropies, scientists, vaccine developers, industry and civil society, noting that its role is both catalytic and convenient.
“We mobilise resources, invest in promising science, and help share risks that individual partners may be unable or unwilling to carry alone. CEPI helps to connect these capabilities while embedding equitable access from the outset so that scientific discoveries become solutions that protect people,” he said.
Since its creation in 2017, CEPI has supported more than 50 vaccine candidates and 25 platform investments, he said, adding that the world’s first Phase 2 clinical trial of a Lassa fever vaccine began in Abuja.
“We have funded the development of six Lassa fever vaccine candidates with two clinical trials in West Africa,” he said, adding that CEPI had also launched the largest ever study on disease-borne illness across West Africa and supported the creation of the Lassa fever coalition with West African Ministers of Health.
“Epidemic preparedness goes beyond health. It is about protecting economies, strengthening scientific institutions, and building national resilience. Together, we can achieve what no single organisation can accomplish alone. And that, I believe, is how we move from innovation to impact,” he said.
In the panel session on moving health innovations from research to impact, speakers further stressed the need for stronger collaboration between government and the private sector, as well as sustainable financing for primary healthcare.
Jennifer Ayanti of the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria said the private sector must be brought into the heart of health system planning, from commodities and drug management to local production and costing, noting that committees are often organized with government oversight but with limited deliberate inclusion of private players.
“In the problem of scaling, government must come together with private sector as a single system,” she said, while also calling for patient capital and dedicated development funds from government to support primary health centres.
For his part, the Commissioner for Health, Niger State, Murtala Mohammad, said his administration had to address fragmentation in the health system after his appointment.
“When I was appointed I had to find the missing link and in doing so I created a SWAp office that helps coordinate and sets a coordinating platform that brings everyone on the table including partners to close the gap about what happened between the ministry, primary health care center and department of secondary health,” he said.