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The Federal Government has expressed commitment to increase the tax on sugar sweetened beverages from 10 per cent to 20 per cent.
Director of Public Health Department, Federal Ministry of Health, Dr. Chukwuma Anyaike, disclosed this at the Pro-Health Tax Policy Campaign on Thursday, in Abuja.
Anyaike said taxation on sugar sweetened Beverages, SSBs, has been successfully implemented in countries like Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Portugal, and so many others to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks.
She noted that the introduction and sustenance of the tax in Nigeria can reduce excess consumption of SSBs and there by reducing the burden of attaining the global best practice.
Also speaking, Peter Agada, advised Nigerians to stay off carbonated drinks, saying that the cost of purchasing those products is cheap but the cost of treating diabetes is more.
Agba, who spoke on behalf of persons with diabetes, called on the Federal Government to, as a matter of urgency, subsidise the cost of diabetes management, including medications and monitoring devices, to reduce preventable deaths.
“If there’s anything the government can do, things like making the health insurance scheme easily available to people that are non-government like myself, I’m not in the government. I don’t work in the public sector. But I don’t have an NHIS for example. I know that there are several people now providing that service, but it’s not easily available to the majority of people.
“One out of 17 Nigerians people are living with diabetes or pre-diabetes, and are going to become diabetic very, very soon. So, this is a pandemic, and diabetes is a killer disease. We’re not looking at it that way. It’s a destroyer of lives all over the world right now,” he said.
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