FG moves to harmonise conflicting health statistics

Detailed summary

The Federal Government has raised concerns over conflicting health statistics in Nigeria, calling for a unified national data system to address discrepanci Read More:…

The Federal Government has raised concerns over conflicting health statistics in Nigeria, calling for a unified national data system to address discrepancies in figures reported by government agencies and health surveys.

The Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare, Dr Iziaq Salako, said “inconsistent and outdated statistics could undermine health sector planning, policy decisions, resource allocation and the assessment of government interventions.”

Salako spoke on Wednesday in Abuja while declaring open the scientific conference of the 2026 Joint Annual Review of the health sector, themed Make the Data Count.

He said the country needed to move beyond collecting and presenting health data to establishing whether policies and programmes were delivering measurable improvements in people’s health.

“A health system that only reports activity learns slowly, while one that tests its claims in public learns faster,” the minister said.

Salako identified the fragmentation of health data across different agencies and reporting platforms as a major challenge, explaining that the same health indicator often produced different figures because of variations in data sources, reporting periods, definitions and population denominators.

He cited the maternal mortality ratio of “512 deaths per 100,000 live births,” which he said was still being circulated as a current figure despite being based on the 2018 baseline.

The minister also questioned discrepancies in reported skilled birth attendance, antenatal care visits and health insurance coverage.

According to him, “skilled birth attendance stands at about 86 per cent in routine facility reports but 50 per cent in the Mini-Demographic and Health Survey because the former measures facility births while the latter captures all births.”

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