By Samuel Luka, Bauchi
When a poor household spends almost all its meagre income on hospital bills, the first casualty is often a child's education.
This was the stark human reality painted by former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Abubakar Rasheed, on Friday in Azare, Bauchi State.
Rasheed, while delivering the pre-convocation lecture of the Federal University of Health Sciences, Azare (FUHSA) yesterday, warned that the government must stop treating health as an afterthought.
"Don't treat health as a sectoral issue. It is a condition that makes development possible," he said.
Speaking on the theme: "From Medical Education to National Wellbeing: The Promise of Universities of Health Sciences in Nigeria," the former Vice-Chancellor of Bayero University, Kano, said Nigeria cannot achieve meaningful development without prioritising health and nutrition.
He illustrated the linkage with everyday struggles.
"A child who is frequently ill may struggle to learn. A mother whose nutritional needs are unmet faces risks that reach beyond her own health. A poor family paying repeatedly for treatment may be forced to withdraw children from school," he said.
According to him, a child's empty stomach, a mother's poor diet and a father's repeated drug receipts are not just health issues – they are development issues that keep families trapped in poverty.
Citing a 2024 UNICEF report, Rasheed noted that about 11 million Nigerian children under five suffer severe child food poverty because their diets lack diversity, a situation that robs them of the chance to grow and learn.
He said universities like FUHSA, which on Saturday graduated its pioneer 50 students in Human Nutrition and Dietetics, hold the key to breaking the cycle if they focus on research that solves local problems.
"Clinical nutrition can be part of treatment. Community nutrition can help prevent illness. Good dietary counselling can give a patient agency at a vulnerable moment," he said.
Rasheed urged government and stakeholders to strengthen specialised health sciences universities, retain health workers, and ensure health professionals are deployed equitably to rural areas where poor families bear the heaviest burden.
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