‘Nigerians Spent $1.3 Billion On Medical Tourism In India In 2014’

AS Nigeria search for ways to exit the club of countries seeking medical tourism abroad, experts have said Nigerians spent a whopping sum of $1.3 billion for medical treatment in India in 2014 alone.

Making the revelation in Lagos yesterday during the opening of Genesis Specialist Hospital, Oduduwa, Ikeja, Lagos, the medical experts urged the Federal Government to put favourable policies in place to attract Nigerian medical personnel living abroad.
Genesis Specialist Hospital Medical Director, Dr Roger Olade, who had been in the US for the past 20 years, stated that unless everything is done to attract Nigerian trained medical experts practicing in abroad, spending on medical tourism abroad would not recede.

Critical Care and Emergency Medicine specialist, Olade, who had his clinical pulmonary toxicology fellowship from Harvard Medical School, said many patients die in Nigerian hospitals from heart-related diseases because Nigeria lacks the expertise and facilities to manage sophisticated medical cases. “Critical care medicine is basically none existent in Nigeria. We do not actually have training for it in Nigeria. Every doctor just tries to do it. When people have heartache and stroke or cannot breath they need doctors to help,” Olade, who had won several medical awards in US, said.

Olade revealed that Genesis Specialist Hospital, which he said is equipped with world-class medical facilities, is in Nigeria to bridge the gap, adding that the hospital has the capacity to run telemedicine. He explained that the hospital has been training local doctors and attending to patients on emergency issues with the desire success.

Olade called for regular training for local doctors, even as he emphasised the need to create deliberate policies to attract Nigerian doctors living abroad.