Why I Proposed 1% Profit of Private Sector As Contribution to Health-Dangote

Aliko Dangote

April 16, 2018//-The President of Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote has given an insight into why he is advocating that the private sector operators in the country commit one per cent of their profit annually to funding health care services.

Dangote had suggested to members of an expanded National Economic Council meeting recently the need to have a trust fund to revitalise the nation’s sorry public health sector similar to the education trust fund operated at the federal level, and security trust fund run in some states.

He expressed the conviction that such trust fund would go a long way to help the nation’s health sector and improve the people’s well-being in the face of multiple challenges confronting the nation with limited resources available to government.

His advice came on the day the Co-Chair, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Bill Gates picked holes in the economic policy of the Federal Government, when he said the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) being bandied by the government did not address the needs of Nigerians.

Gates said the ERGP was just a mere document, which identifies the need to invest in people, but which has failed to reflect so in its implementation.

The Microsoft Founder stated emphatically that Nigeria was a dangerous country to give birth as it is the fourth worst country in maternity mortality rate in the world, only better than Sierra Leone, Central African Republic and Chad.

Dangote, while speaking with newsmen in Lagos at the weekend on the proposal for one per cent profit for health care trust fund, said for Nigeria to invest in her people, the same people must have good health.

The President of Dangote Group explained that such fund could be administered by government and private sector together for maximum impact just as being done in the educational sector.

While expressing his readiness to offer necessary assistance to government on how to come about the trust fund, he enjoined private sector operators to be ready to join hands with government “to achieve the overall objective of improving our public health sector and turn around our human capital availability.”

Dangote had through his foundation; the Dangote Foundation committed billions of Naira on critical intervention in the health sector by building hospitals and equipping teaching hospitals.

His Foundation is currently building the biggest maternity wards in Aminu Kano specialist hospital and state of the arts Surgical Operating Theatre and Diagnostic Centre (SDC), at a cost N7 billion, which soon be completed.

Independent.ng

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