Uade S. Ugbomoiko, A Professor of Zoology at the University of Ilorin estimated the cost of malaria to Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) yearly between 1-6%
Ugbomoiko said “The economic costs of parasitic diseases are significant, creating an ugly development that has a heavy toll on productivity.
He stated this while delivering the university’s 134th inaugural lecture in Ilorin, Kwara State capital, that foreign investment could reduce the GDP by as much as 20 percent or more by the next decade in some sub-Saharan African countries.
The lecture was entitled: “That we may lay siege.”
He said that hundreds of millions of people in Sub-Saharan Africa are being afflicted with these parasites, and more than a quarter of the affected population has one or more infections occurring simultaneously.
Ugbomoiko said that the actualisation of the advocated health for all by 2020 is likely to be a mirage without concerted efforts to address the issue of the government complacency and lack of funding together with breaching the gap between the rich and poor that widens daily to change behavioural activities that cause the bulk of human parasitic diseases.
He said that it is high time the government saw the occurrence of ancient parasitic diseases in the present century as a social defect and formulate appropriate political will to address them. To achieve a qualitative and holistic control of these parasites, we must evolve a broad-based strategy that will combine good planning, policy consistency with a strong progressive refinement guidelines supported by strong framework for its implementation.
According to him, technology and chemotherapic strategies in disease control will ameliorate the growing threats of infectious animals, but are unlikely to provide what is needed to control parasitic diseases in Africa.
“Improving the health of the poor is therefore not through technology alone, but by ensuring that basic needs of all are met through intervention that is emancipator in action. Therefore, the option of behavioural change that will cost nothing to the government and the concerned individual will successfully complement disease control efforts,” he said.
