According to the International Diabetes Federation, more than 3 million Nigerians live with diabetes, in-country researchers say that number is actually up to 11 million.

With inflation driving up costs, diabetes management has become a crisis for most Nigerians living with the disease.

Women face a distinct problem. Nigeria’s healthcare system assumes they have support structures while simultaneously expecting them to be those support structures for family members.

Why It Matters

Female caregivers for family members with diabetes experience four times a higher burden than male caregivers. Women who are diabetic and also primary caregivers, are responsible for managing both their own diabetic diets and male relatives’ meals. For instance, healthcare providers routinely invite wives to diabetes consultations to discuss diet management. They don’t invite husbands when wives are the patients.

Pregnancy creates additional risk: Roughly 450,000 Nigerian women develop gestational diabetes annually. Most don’t know until delivery complications force diagnosis. Women with previous gestational diabetes have 7 times an increased risk of developing Type 2 diabetes later in life and no systematic follow-up exists to catch this progression.

State of Play

● One in nine Nigerian women (11%) develops diabetes during pregnancy. Many don’t know it, 41% have never even heard of gestational diabetes.

● Even among women who do get screened, only 41% are aware that gestational diabetes exists as a distinct condition, compared to 90% who know about diabetes generally.

● Nigeria’s maternal mortality ratio reached 1,047 per 100,000 live births in 2020 the highest globally. Diabetes is an indirect but significant contributor.

● The healthcare system is designed around male patients with female support, not female patients who are the support.

● 75.4% of healthcare providers lack clear gestational diabetes guidelines.

Bottom Line

Nigeria’s diabetes care response relies largely on women, and operates as if they have unlimited capacity to manage family health while neglecting their own. Women achieve better medication compliance than men but worse health outcomes because the healthcare system expects them to serve as unpaid clinical support for male relatives while receiving no equivalent support themselves.