Nigeria’s Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Muhammad Ali Pate, has acknowledged gaps in the country’s monitoring of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), saying the available data may not show the full scale of drug-resistant infections.
Speaking at a joint One Health ministerial briefing in Abuja on Monday, 12 October 2026, Pate said resistant infections were being identified in hospitals, but incomplete surveillance limited reliable national estimates, according to Premium Times in a report published on Tuesday.
Why the Figures Need Careful Interpretation
AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites no longer respond effectively to medicines used to treat infections. It can make illnesses harder to treat and increase the risk of complications.
Nigeria’s 2024–2028 national AMR action plan cites estimates for 2019 of 64,500 deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance and 263,400 deaths associated with it. These are different measures: deaths associated with resistance are not necessarily deaths directly caused by it.
The figures are historical estimates rather than a confirmed count of current deaths. Pate said gaps in surveillance mean national estimates should be treated with caution.
Survey and Laboratory Readiness
Nigeria launched a nationally representative AMR survey in December 2025. The exercise is designed to include 40 to 45 randomly selected health facilities and approximately 35,000 patients suspected of bloodstream infections. Those numbers describe planned coverage, not completed survey findings.
A separate 2025 assessment of 302 laboratories found that 7.3% were considered fully ready for AMR surveillance, while 12.3% reported participating in it. The findings highlighted uneven laboratory capacity, particularly outside major government and tertiary facilities.
Government Response and Abuja Conference
Pate said the government was working to improve laboratory diagnosis, infection prevention, and appropriate antibiotic use. He also described antimicrobial stewardship programmes in federal hospitals and wider cooperation between the health, agriculture, livestock, and environment sectors.
The briefing came ahead of the fifth Global High-Level Ministerial Conference on Antimicrobial Resistance, which is scheduled for Abuja from 6 to 8 December 2026, according to the official conference secretariat. The meeting is expected to consider practical action across human, animal, and environmental health.
The immediate challenge is to strengthen the systems needed to identify resistant infections accurately and guide treatment. Without broader testing and dependable reporting, Nigeria cannot confidently measure the scale of the problem or track progress against it.
