Do we expect any fundamental changes in the way healthcare services or delivery are shaped today in 2010? The answer can be derived from what the sector experienced in 2009 in terms of funding and policies. There has always been the drug insufficiency issue, the issue of healthcare facilities and the deepening of the pharmaceutical sector to help drive drug-related issues in the country. These issues will, according to analysts and stakeholders in the sector, remain top risks for the health sector in 2010. And all of this underlines the difficulty many Nigerians face when seeking requisite medical attention, which has resulted in the migration of hordes of Nigerians abroad for medical attention. Medical tourism is a term initially coined by travel agencies and the mass media to describe the rapidly-growing practice of travelling across international borders to obtain health care. Though NAFDAC has in recent times been able to help reinstate some form of orderliness into the licensure and sale of food and medicines, that has not stopped the privileged in the society, even the nation’s President Umar Yar’Adua, from seeking medical attention abroad when they are suffering from one ailment or the other. The question is, are there plans to revert this trend in this New Year? Beatrice Akpan is currently in India and has undergone a heart surgery. She says her choice is informed by the reliability of medicare in that country, and the affordability of same: “I went to India for treatment because I know people who have gone there and have been treated well, and so when I found out I had to undergo surgery, it had to be India. The cost of the surgery when compared with other countries doing the same is very moderate; hence my choice of India.” Like Beatrice, Samir Udani, chairman, Mecure Group of industries, a pharmaceutical and healthcare delivery company based in Lagos, notes: “When people need their health to be taken care of and all the services are not available, they opt for option B which is UK, USA, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, India, etc. The prices that obtain in these countries differ, even though they can all provide the same services. I speak for India because that is where I am from, and I know that the fees are not as expensive as others and as such people visit India more. The facilities are very good and the services are excellent yet affordable; hence the need for the rush to India for treatment.” Obviously, the influx of tourists to India and other overseas countries, not for sightseeing but for medicare, says a lot about Nigeria’s shoddy health sector. “It is a problem and challenge to us that our population has not been able to provide good healthcare for our citizens. The government projects year in and year-out; but still, citizens are not having good medical attention. When you go to clinics, it is something else. You go to government hospitals; it is something else. I also think the pharmaceutical companies ought to be encouraged,” Boniface Okezie, president, Professional Shareholders Association, insists. Complaints may stem from many quarters, but there are nonetheless some who believe that the nation’s health sector is a work in progress which will be optimal in some years to come. The question remains-when? They cite the situation in Lagos, which is doing quite well in the area of healthcare delivery for residents. One of such persons is the chairman, Lagos House Committee on Health, Samuel Babatunde Adejare, who notes that “we do not want people to travel out for treatment again. Rather, we want people to be treated here in Lagos. For instance, we now do open heart surgery at LASUTH; we also have physical care units. We are building a cardiac centre in Gbagada, where the largest burns centre will be sited. There is one in LASUTH but we are taking it further. Check Lagos out in some years to come and you will be amazed.” While Nigerians continue to troop beyond the nation’s shores for medical treatment by the day, one fact stands: the health sector is in dire need of an upgrade. Citizens who are not so privileged, meanwhile, await the future of a promising country, hoping that someday, optimum medicare will be very much available without the need to catch the next plane traveling overseas in the new year.
