Clinical services, research to halt medical tourism, says CMD of UMTH

Chief Medical Director of the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), Prof. Ahmed Ahidjo has expressed confidence that clinical services and research would halt medical tourism in the country.He lamented that medical tourism has continued to drain the foreign exchange of patients who seek medical services abroad.

Ahidjo disclosed this on Wednesday in Maiduguri, when members of Correspondents’ Chapel of Borno State council of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), paid him a courtesy visit to mark 100 days in office.

The CMD said the position of the hospital should be in line with its mandate of providing clinical services training and research.“Our focus is to ensure that we put UMTH in a position of providing treatments for diseases that are very difficult to be in the six north eastern states.“We have to be above the hospital in the region for the provision of medical leadership, where patient care is the main objective,” he said.

He added that the health institutions should be able to cope with the movements of patients to India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Ghana, a neighbouring country for medial tourism.

Ahidjo stressed that if the hospital could provide the medical services, patients will not go elsewhere.He explained that when a patient goes elsewhere for services, it means that there is something there that is being offered, which the other facility is not offering.

He said that nobody would like to spend ticket money to travel abroad for medical services, if it could be obtained in the country.On training, he said some of its workers have been trained in Ibadan and Abuja to offer services to the communities to make UMTH a regional training centre.