Health experts have warned that declining international donor funding is exposing critical vulnerabilities in Nigeria’s disease detection and surveillance infrastructure, urging immediate reforms to secure domestic financing for sustainable public health systems.
The alert follows the release of a comprehensive assessment, A System in Transition: Nigeria Country Report, presented in Abuja on Wednesday. The report, compiled by Resolve to Save Lives, evaluates the nation’s public health surveillance, laboratory, and specimen transport networks. It concludes that years of heavy reliance on donor-supported, disease-specific programs have created fragmented systems poorly equipped to withstand funding fluctuations.
According to the analysis, chronic underfunding and structural challenges are now being exacerbated by recent reductions in external support. This is directly impacting surveillance coverage, laboratory processing times, workforce retention, and overall outbreak response readiness across the country. The report identifies the current landscape as a pivotal moment, stating that decisions taken now will determine whether Nigeria’s health security apparatus further fragments or is consolidated under national ownership.
Nanlop Ogbureke, Executive Director of Resolve to Save Lives Nigeria, described the report as a diagnostic mirror for the nation’s health security at a defining juncture. “Systems that rely heavily on parallel funding streams and disease-specific architectures are inherently fragile. When funding shifts, the cracks widen,” she noted, emphasizing that the model is unsustainable.
The assessment underscores the urgent need for increased domestic investment, particularly at the state level where disease detection and initial response occur. Kaduna State Epidemiologist Dr. Jeremiah Daiko reinforced this call, stating that strengthening the health system is now a survival priority. “ donor funding has decreased significantly. So we need to look inward to see how our state and government can support surveillance, laboratory services, outbreak response,” he said, adding that the initiative is particularly timely for subnational entities facing reduced external aid.
The report’s release positions Nigeria’s health system reform as a matter of national and regional security. With a history of managing outbreaks such as Ebola, Lassa fever, and polio, the country’s capacity to independently detect and contain health threats has broader implications for West Africa. The findings advocate for a strategic shift toward integrated, government-funded systems that can ensure continuity regardless of donor priorities.
The window for implementing these reforms is framed as narrow and critical. Without deliberate action to increase budgetary allocations and harmonize fragmented programs, experts warn that Nigeria risks a deterioration in its capacity to protect public health, leaving the population exposed to preventable epidemics and undermining long-term health security goals.
