Japanese firm partners UCH, UNN to boost capacity in health care delivery

Tertiary healthcare in the country is set to take a further boost, as the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital (UCH) partners Japanese firm, Nijap-Fuji, for state of the art medical equipment.

Both parties sealed a pact at the weekend that would see the Japanese firm supplying the much needed facilities to UCH at no cost to health facility.

Representative of the UCH, Mrs Juliana Mathew, who spoke at signing ceremony in Abuja, noted that government alone cannot finance the health sector.
She said: “Health care treatment has become capital intensive so if you want to wait and fold our arms and say that until government provides the money, people will die. The irony of it is that it could be anybody.”

She assured the Japanese company that the partnership between it and UCH was important and one that would work.

“So what I want to say in essence is that, this partnership is very important and I want to assure our partner that they should be at rest because this partnership is one that will work. I know that by the time we start this, our partner will want to ask for more,” she stressed.

The Chairman, Nijap-Fuji, Mr. Kato Kazumichi, said the aim of the partnership was to bring Nigeria’s health care sector to the Japanese level. Japan, he said, has the highest life expectancy in the world, attributing it to its highly developed health care facilities.

He noted that government alone could not fund the health sector and said that a deliberate effort by hospital is crucial if medical tourism is to be brought to its barest minimum.
His words: “We at Nijap Fuji Nigeria Limited have decided to collaborate with hospitals, private and public ones to bring in equipment, install and maintain them at no cost to the hospitals to help provide the needed care Nigerians desire.”

He said the private public partnership (PPP) with Nigeria’s public hospitals would bridge the gap in healthcare funding especially in diagnosis.

Kato said his firm was looking to a similar Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of Nigeria and was hopeful that the scheme would be replicated with other universities.