Nigeria is losing an estimated $400 million in productivity every year to hypertension, while government spending on preventing and controlling the disease remains far below the level required to address its growing health and economic burden, the Legislative Initiative for Sustainable Development (LISDEL) has said.
The organisation also raised concern over the country’s poor hypertension control rate, revealing that only about four per cent of Nigerians living with the condition have their blood pressure adequately controlled.
It warned that the situation was leaving millions of people vulnerable to serious complications, including stroke, diabetes, disability and other noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).
Policy Officer of LISDEL, Olympus Ade-Banjo, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja while presenting an economic case analysis and recommendations on hypertension and NCDs at a masterclass on reporting the underfunding of hypertension and other NCDs in Nigeria.
The session focused particularly on the 2025 and 2026 federal budget cycles and the need for journalists to interrogate government spending on diseases that are increasingly imposing significant health and economic costs on Nigerians.
Ade-Banjo said the burden of hypertension goes beyond the number of deaths and illnesses recorded, as affected individuals and their families are also confronted with the high cost of lifelong treatment.
He explained that the country equally suffers significant productivity losses when people living with the disease become too ill to work or are forced to spend productive hours seeking medical care.
Available data, according to him, indicate that only between 30 and 37 per cent of treated hypertension patients achieve their target blood pressure, pointing to persistent challenges with treatment adherence even among people who have already been diagnosed.
“This is beyond awareness. The first one is an issue of being aware that you have hypertension. The second one is being able to adhere, being able to continue to buy those drugs,” he said.
Ade-Banjo further disclosed that between 30 and 38 per cent of Nigerians are not adequately sensitised about hypertension, a gap that translates into tens of millions of people who may lack sufficient knowledge about the disease and its dangers.
He warned that inadequate public understanding could also fuel misconceptions about hypertension, encourage unsafe practices and cause patients to delay seeking appropriate medical care.
The financial burden on households, he said, was equally disturbing, with an average household spending between $20 and $55 every month on hypertension-related healthcare.
Such expenses, Ade-Banjo explained, can become particularly devastating for low-income families and push them into what health economists refer to as impoverishment, where the cost of healthcare forces households to sacrifice basic necessities.
“Imagine 48.2 per cent of people that are affected by hypertension are exposed to impoverishment. It is making you choose between health or food,” he said.
$400m Productivity Loss
Ade-Banjo said hypertension and other related NCDs were also taking a heavy toll on Nigeria’s economy through reduced productivity.
He put the minimum annual productivity loss associated with hypertension at $400 million, while noting that losses in some years had been considerably higher.
Despite the scale of the challenge, he expressed concern that government funding for hypertension prevention and control remained grossly inadequate.
According to him, just 0.05 per cent of Nigeria’s health budget in 2025 was allocated to hypertension, leaving an estimated 99.8 per cent gap between current government investment and what is required for effective control of the disease.
He also said NCDs collectively receive only about six per cent of the health budget, despite accounting for more than 30 per cent of deaths in Nigeria.
The funding gap, he argued, was contributing to weaknesses across the country’s response to hypertension and other chronic diseases.
Ade-Banjo disclosed that only about 10 per cent of activities contained in the government’s multisectoral action plans for combating hypertension had been implemented, leaving approximately 90 per cent of planned interventions outstanding.
Among the areas affected by the implementation gap, he said, were public awareness, research, access to medicines, healthcare service delivery and other interventions necessary to improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
Evidence Shows Investment Can Work
Despite the challenges, Ade-Banjo said Nigeria could achieve better health outcomes if available resources were strategically invested in evidence-based interventions.
He cited the ACTS programme, which includes the use of standard treatment protocols, task-sharing, patient registration and monitoring, health insurance linkages and digital platforms for tracking and supporting patients.
According to him, the programme has demonstrated that hypertension outcomes can improve when primary healthcare facilities are adequately equipped to manage uncomplicated cases and patients have consistent access to medication and follow-up care.
He said interventions under the programme had produced improvements including a 2.7 per cent increase in blood pressure control, a 2.1 per cent improvement in diabetes control, a 4.8 per cent increase in patients receiving treatment and a 5.2 per cent rise in registered patients.
“These things can be done. It works if we are able to do all of those different activities by, for instance, providing the drugs at the right time, empowering the facilities to go out to do the outreaches, putting them on a digital platform and tracking each of the patients and lastly, of course, monitoring the progress,” he said.
He maintained that stronger investment in hypertension prevention and control could produce significant long-term health and economic benefits for the country.
Ade-Banjo disclosed that investing about $1.7 billion over a 15-year period, equivalent to more than $113 million annually, could generate substantial returns through lives saved, deaths prevented and productivity preserved.
PHCs Key to Tackling Hypertension
The LISDEL policy officer identified primary healthcare centres (PHCs) as the most efficient platform for delivering hypertension and other NCD interventions, particularly because of their proximity to communities.
He said strengthening PHCs would make healthcare more accessible while reducing the financial burden on patients who often have to travel long distances to tertiary facilities for services that could be provided closer to home.
According to him, patients who access primary healthcare services generally spend less on treatment because they incur lower transportation and related costs.
He therefore called on the Federal Government to move beyond budgetary allocations and ensure the actual release of funds earmarked for NCD programmes.
Among the recommendations put forward, Ade-Banjo called for dedicated budget lines for the national NCD programme, with an immediate annual investment of about $113 million.
He also advocated the nationwide expansion of the ACTS programme to primary healthcare delivery points, saying such an approach would help improve access to treatment, patient monitoring and blood pressure control.
Patients and communities affected by hypertension and other NCDs, he added, should be actively involved in the design, implementation and monitoring of government health programmes.
Ade-Banjo said the recommendations were still undergoing stakeholder consultations and would subsequently be presented to the relevant ministry as policy advice.
Journalists Urged to Report Solutions
He also challenged journalists covering health issues to go beyond highlighting the scale of Nigeria’s NCD crisis and pay greater attention to solutions that can produce measurable results.
Ade-Banjo said solutions-focused reporting could help the public and policymakers understand not only the extent of the problem but also what interventions are working and how successful models could be expanded.
“This is where you can also test solutions while you are covering an event rather than just everything is bad, everything is bad,” he said.
He maintained that stronger collaboration among government, healthcare providers, civil society organisations, patients, communities and the media would be essential to reversing the country’s hypertension crisis.
For Nigeria, the figures presented by LISDEL underscore the argument that hypertension is no longer only a public health concern but also a significant economic issue, with inadequate prevention and treatment carrying consequences for household finances, workforce productivity and national development.