The Federal Government Monday, February 28, advised Nigerians to seek information on the treatment of some diseases locally before thinking of going abroad.
According to the government, the advice became necessary because many of its hospitals across the country were now treating some of the medical issues pushing some citizens outside the shores of the country.
The Minister of State for Health, Dr Olorunnimbe Mamora, gave the advice while inspecting some newly acquired facilities to improve the care of patients by the Federal Medical Centre, Jabi in Abuja. He said government had put measures in place to address medical tourism.
Maybe his reasons hinge on the fact that experts have said that Nigeria loses about 576 billion naira every year to medical tourism. An amount that could have been invested in the development of the country’s health care system and the country as a whole. This is about 100 billion naira less than the 632.7 billion naira allocated to the health sector in the 2021 budget.
This is besides the promises made by President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 to stop medical tourism and save the nation scarce foreign exchange if elected president.
In fact, he promised to ban elected government officials from foreign medical trips after he rued the millions of dollars expended on medical tourism.
Before the dawn of the global pandemic in 2020, reports suggested that almost 5,000 people leave the country monthly for various forms of treatment abroad. Only COVID-19 could stop that number from going up, but it may be increasing again.
A Price Waterhouse Coopers (2016) report states that Nigerians spend $1 billion annually on medical tourism with 60 per cent of it on four key specialties namely: oncology, orthopedics, nephrology and cardiology.
This is nearly 20 per cent of the total government spending on public health sector for the year including salaries of all public sector doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers as well as other health programmes like malaria, tuberculosis, polio and Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) prevention.
You can talk of improvement but an analysis by the Oxford Business Group (OBG)
suggests that the development of the Nigerian
healthcare system has been hindered by several
notable challenges, including limited public funding, a high communicable diseases burden, rising incidence of non-communicable diseases, elevatedrates of infant and maternal mortality.
Similarly, the World Health Organisation (WHO) highlights that there is high reliance on out-of-pocket (OOP) health payments as a means of financing health system in Nigeria and that this has continued for many years in spite of a consensus to move closer to Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and sustain it when achieved.
CBN intervention
The Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, announced the creation of Healthcare Care Sector Research and Development Intervention Scheme (HSRDIS) or Health Sector Intervention Facility (HSIF) in 2020.
CBN said, “specifically HSRDIS is designed to trigger intense national Research and Development activities to develop a Nigerian vaccine, drugs and herbal medicines/medical devices against the spread of COVID-19 and any other communicable or non-communicable diseases.
“This will be done through the provision of grants to biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies, institutions, researchers, and research institutes. The grants will support research and development of drugs, herbal medicines/medical devices and vaccines for the control, prevention and treatment of infectious diseases.”
In late 2021, reports said that a review of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) balance of payment data in August 2021 showed that Nigerians have spent $11.01 billion on health-related services abroad.
According to the data, Nigerians spent $11.01 billion on health expenses abroad between 2011 and the first quarter of 2021, recording the highest in 2019 with $2.56 billion foreign health expenses, and the least in 2016 at $17 million.
The most recent statistics made available by Emeiele at the launch of the 100 for 100 initiatives, indicates that in healthcare, 122 major healthcare projects have been funded to the tune of 115.36 billion naira.
He said, “These healthcare interventions went to 31 pharmaceutical and 91 hospital projects.
“This intervention helped to support the acquisition of 59 Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners, 42 Computer Tomography (CT) scanners, and 4 Oncology screening machines.”
It is expected that as a result of this development, Nigerians will no longer have reasons to travel out of the country to seek medical attention and care, especially on cancer-related and other special health issues. But, President Buhari understands the country still has a long way to go. Besides, he would prefer medical attention in his favourite country.
The President will Tuesday, travel to Nairobi, where he is billed to participate in the Commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the United Nations Environmental Programme, scheduled for March 3 – 4, 2022.
He will thereafter proceed to London for routine medical checks that will last for a maximum of two weeks.
When he goes for this routine check, the president would have spent almost 300 days on medical tourism since he resumed at Aso Rock.
