FG Claims Health Gains as Maternal Deaths Fall 60%

The Federal Government has reported significant progress in Nigeria’s healthcare sector, claiming the complete achievement of all 41 performance targets set under President Bola Tinubu’s administration alongside a 60 per cent reduction in maternal mortality across designated intervention areas.

According to a report by Punch Newspaper on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, while speaking at the third Nigeria Health Sector Joint Annual Review in Abuja, Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare Prof. Ali Pate highlighted extensive primary healthcare revitalisation efforts nationwide.

Pate disclosed that 3,526 primary healthcare facilities have been revitalised with work ongoing on 900 more, while nearly 20,000 skilled birth attendants were recruited across 22 states and over 78,000 frontline health workers underwent training to strengthen grassroots healthcare delivery.

The minister revealed that cumulative disbursements under the Basic Health Care Provision Fund reached N422.3bn by October 2026, boosting facility-based skilled deliveries to 7.9 million and expanding health insurance coverage from 16 million to almost 24 million beneficiaries nationwide.

Under the Maternal and Newborn Mortality Reduction Innovation Initiative, maternal case fatalities dropped by 60 per cent, supported by emergency transport systems operating in 171 local government areas that successfully transported over 100,000 expectant mothers and newborn infants for urgent medical care.

Free emergency obstetric services provided nearly 100,000 interventions over two years, including over 80,000 caesarean sections, while government interventions drastically lowered dialysis costs by 80 per cent for thousands of patients alongside commissioning ten new medical manufacturing production lines.

Despite these notable achievements, officials acknowledged ongoing challenges including a slight increase in child stunting rates, declining overall patient satisfaction scores, persistent health workforce shortages, and slow emergency response times achieving only a 22 per cent early response rate.

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