Nigeria  has been ranked 16th in the world following its decline in its crude death rate from 12.46 in 2016 to 12.16 in 2017.
 
This figure places Nigeria at 2.38% lower than its 12.77% in 2015. A figure that is close to Lesotho and Estonia as compared to Bulgaria which is at the top of the ranking with a crude death rate of 15.17% according World Data Atlas).
 
Crude death rate indicates the number of death occurring among the population of a given geographical area during a given year, per 1,000 mid-year total population of the given geographical area during the same year, says World Health organisation (WHO).
 
The United Nation Populations Division revealed that Nigeria’s crude death was peaked in 1960 with a maximum value of 26.18 and a minimum value of 12.70 in 2015.
 
According to WHO report, more than half of deaths recorded in Africa are currently due to malaria, and the disease kills more than 400,000 people annually. One child dies from Malaria every two minutes and a vast majority are young children in Sub-Saharan Africa; especially in Nigeria and Democratic Republic Of Congo (DRC).
 
In 2015, 90% of malaria cases and 92% of malaria deaths occurred in Africa. WHO estimates that there were 212 million new cases of Malaria in 2015 worldwide and 182 million Nigerians are at risk of an infection.
 
Olugbenga Shotonwa, a senior medical officer at Apapa General Hospital, said “there has been an increased attention by the government in tackling crude death rate such as the improvement of good environmental and sanitary condition, provision of improved health care medical facilities, distribution of free mosquito nets and so on vis-à-vis have helped to save life and poverty”. He said.
 
Government expenditure on health in 2015 and 2016 was N300 billion and N250 billion respectively. In 2017, of the N7.44 trillion budget expenditure, only about 4.17 percent was allocated to the health sector. A sector that is unarguably one of the most critical sectors that drive other sectors of a country as only healthy people can plan for security, development and economics advancement.
 
For Dim Victor, a Health Economist from University of Benin said countries all over the world are moving faster when it comes to health care delivery for example, the United States of America initiated a health care bill that can cover a large majority of its citizens. In his words, “The National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) don’t cater for larger percentage of the population.”
 
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