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President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) Prof. Innocent Ujah, says cancer is a great burden to the Nigerian population, especially medical practitioners, because the country faces challenges of prevention, treatment and care for it.
Ujah said this on Wednesday in Abuja at the third webinar on Pro-Health Tax in Nigeria with the theme: “Addressing the Increasing Prevalence of NCDs in Nigeria through Pro-Health Taxes’’.
The forum which was organized in collaboration with Nigeria Health Watch (NHW), was supported by the National Action on Sugar Reduction (NASR), the Healthcare Federation of Nigeria and the Nigeria Cancer Society.
Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs. Zainab Ahmed, while presenting the breakdown of the 2022 budget, had announced an excise tax of N10 per liter on all non-alcoholic, carbonated and sweetened beverages.
Ahmed said that the new tax was introduced to raise excise duties and revenues for health-related and other critical expenditures in line with the 2022 budget priorities.
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The minister noted that the primary aim of the tax was to discourage excessive consumption of sugar in beverages, which contributed to obesity, diabetes and other diseases.
The NMA leader also stressed that Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) had less nutritional value, so a tax on SSBs should be seen as one component of a comprehensive approach to tackling unhealthy diets.
A public health expert, Prof. Akin Osibogun, stated that the chronic nature of Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) constituted a long-term economic burden that could be minimized through lower investment in preventive interventions.
Osibogun, former Chief Medical Director of the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), noted that 40 per cent of the total number of deaths, are attributable to NCDs in East Africa due to poor access to healthcare.
