Nigeria has launched a national drive to expand newborn screening, with the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Professor Muhammad Ali Pate, unveiling the One Million Newborn Screening Campaign. According to Channels Television, the initiative carries the theme Every Baby Deserves a Healthy Start in Life and places its emphasis on advancing the early detection of health conditions in babies, setting a clear ambition for how the country wants to approach infant health in the coming years.
The campaign is to be executed by ISN Medical together with its partner Revvity, the two organisations charged with carrying the screening programme forward. By tying the effort to named implementing partners, the initiative moves beyond a broad policy statement and points to the practical machinery that will be expected to deliver the screening services to Nigerian families over the life of the programme.
In presenting the campaign, the minister described the initiative as timely and firmly grounded in evidence, stressing that it fully aligns with the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare's health sector reform agenda. That framing positions newborn screening not as a standalone project, but as part of a wider reform effort that the ministry has been pursuing across the Nigerian health system.
The minister further noted that the data and outcomes generated through newborn screening would strengthen Nigeria's evidence base and directly support the implementation of the Health Sector Renewal Investment Initiative. In this way, the campaign is presented as a source of information that can feed into planning and decision-making, rather than only a clinical service delivered to individual infants and their families.
Represented at the event, the minister commended ISN Medical and its partners for supporting the national vision and encouraged continued collaboration to expand equitable access to quality newborn screening services across Nigeria. The remarks underlined a call for the programme to reach children regardless of where they are born or their family's social and economic status, framing access as a central concern of the initiative.
The campaign has also drawn support from beyond the health ministry, with the Finnish ambassador to Nigeria, represented by a commercial councillor, commending ISN and its partners for convening the initiative aimed at screening one million Nigerian newborns by 2030. That target gives the programme a concrete benchmark against which its progress over the rest of the decade can be measured.
For the organisers, the initiative is seen as pivotal for the country's child health outcomes. The chief executive officer of ISN, Felix Ofungu, expressed optimism about the campaign, pointing to the fact that Nigeria still records one of the highest under-five mortality rates, a reality that the promoters present as underscoring the urgency of expanding newborn screening across the country.