NIGERIA`S GROWING MEDICAL TOURISM TO INDIA. If you look around you, chances are that you know a colleague, friend or neighbour who has been to India for medical treatment in the last two or three years. In the same manner as we send our sons and daughters to foreign universities to escape the bedlam at home. India, increasingly a player in global medical tourism, has become the destination of choice for afflicted Nigerians who can afford to pay their way to the world’s second most populous country. Only last week, one of Nigeria`s newspapers quoted the Indian ambassador to Nigeria as saying that about 50 per cent of Nigerians who visited his country last year did so as medical tourists in search of succour. Enthused the envoy: “Nigeria and India have come a long way in their diplomatic relations, so we will continue to welcome Nigerians to India’s affordable and good quality health care delivery system especially now that there is an increased demand to visit India for medical attention.” Our government likes to tell us how much it has “transformed” Nigeria; and made it over in several sectors. The decision of Nigerians many of whom raise funds to access services in far away lands provides a counter narrative to the shifty-eyed and glib claims of the political class. A senior journalist narrated to me that his decision to raise funds for an Indian medical sojourn last year became necessary because he failed to get relief from the National Orthopaedic Hospital at Igbobi, Lagos which had treated him for injuries suffered in the course of a car accident. In his words: “After ceaseless visits to Igbobi, my doctors suggested that I undergo a hip replacement surgery. This is an operation for which the expertise in human terms is available but the equipment to carry it out is lacking at Igbobi. They then recommended that I go to either India or Israel”. One of the things which shocked his Indian doctors, which by the way are private medical practitioners, was that a national orthopaedic centre lacked facilities to carry out that kind of operation, sentencing their countrymen to lifelong incapacity and sometimes avoidable death. Nigerian government officials routinely pay lip service to the relationship between productivity and a healthy workforce but only for the records or for purposes of political correctness. In reality, health is one of the worst funded and poorly managed social services in the country’s annual budgets. The 2013 budget, for instance, earmarked a paltry 5.7 per cent of the budget to health and this is the highest allocation the sector has received in the last couple of years. But that is not all. Close to 80 per cent of the amount voted will go into such overheads as the salaries and emoluments of the personnel in 56 tertiary institutions leaving very little in the kitty for upgrades, equipment and ancillary facilities. There is also the perception that the ministry is one of the most opaque in terms of accountability; which means no one can be sure about how much of the funds appropriated is spent on health care. It is no secret, for instance that the World Health Organisation rates Nigeria’s health sector as one of the weakest available. Experts also finger, with pain, the fact that the decision of African Heads of State and Government made at an Abuja summit to allocate 15 per cent of annual budgets to health is mocked by Nigeria which hosted the conference, but observes the resolution in the breach. In contrast to Nigeria’s non-compliance, countries such as Rwanda, Botswana, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Niger and Malawi have met the 15 per cent target with the pay-off of an improved health sector. The Health Minister, Prof. Onyebuchi Chukwu, lamented that “funds allocated to security, electoral system among other competing needs might have robbed the health sector of the much needed higher allocation”. His lament has not changed the hard fact of shoving the sector to the lowest burner of national priorities. India’s emergent medical tourism, a cash cow to which Nigerians desperate for cure, increasingly patronise, is private sector-driven but government provides the enabling environment for the industry to thrive. Government supports the sector by making it easy for hospital proprietors to access funds, by providing security and taking care of infrastructure. In Nigeria, the public health sector is rickety while the private health sector is on its own and like other Nigerian businesses, operates as citizens orphaned by an incompetent state. It is estimated that Nigeria loses over N30bn annually to foreign medical treatment necessitated by the failure to pay attention to Nigeria’s health needs. Interestingly, India’s medical tourist sector features the noticeable participation of Indian doctors, formerly in the Diaspora who returned home to set up flourishing practices using up-to-date equipment. By contrast, an increasingly significant proportion of health care providers in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialised world are Nigerians who are reluctant to relocate back home because of well-known infrastructural and governance deficits. Michael Etomi, a medical doctor trained at Obafemi Awolowo University and currently President of the Association of Nigerian Physicians in the Americas, alludes to the need for Nigeria to pay attention to quality assurance in health care delivery; private sector participation, health care research as well as education and training. Obviously, no headway can be made in the areas outlined by Etomi without proper funding and diligent attention. Experts look back with nostalgia on the tenure of the late Prof. Olikoye Ransome Kuti as Minister of Health, in view of the improved status of health care under him as well as his ability to get the military rulers of his dispensation to grant the sector the attention it deserved. To reverse the current lamented status of health care in the country and the attendant medical tourism to India, we must reprioritise health care in national funding and attention, explore public and private sector partnerships that carve out a place for doctors in the Diaspora who are willing to brave the odds to set up hospitals at home, as well as take forcefully on board those deficits, such as erratic power supply that make Nigeria such a difficult place to live in and work. Rolling out the drums to celebrate an impressive growth rate that does not translate into improved human welfare is both cynical and wrong-headed. Nigerian officials may trumpet their achievements to high heavens but the swelling ranks of stranded Nigerians seeking relief in better governed climes index a sobering reality check.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Jul 2013 22:40:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015