Addressing medical challenge
Official statistics show that there is one doctor to every 6,400 patients in Nigeria. This falls far short of the World Health Organisation (WHO) standard of one doctor to every 600 patients, a grave threat to the physical and mental wellbeing of Nigeria’s 170 million population.
Since inception of the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria (MDCN), there have been 65,000 registered medical doctors. Currently, only 25,000 medical doctors are practicing in the country.
The dearth of manpower in the nation’s healthcare is coming at a time the WHO report reveals that 59,000 women die annually from pregnancy and childbirth. The report states that only 39 percent of births are delivered by skilled health professionals and the risk of a woman dying from childbirth is 1 in 18 in Nigeria, compared to 1 in 61 for all developing countries and 1 in 800 in developed countries.
BusinessDay findings show that manpower shortage in health institutions in the country puts undue pressure and stress on the available staff. This shortage is more pronounced at the primary and secondary levels of healthcare and creates disruptive behaviour and disharmony amongst health care workers.
Furthermore, inequality in access to healthcare and dearth of medical facilities have remained major upsets to Nigeria’s healthcare indices, a situation which has made referral of patients from health institutions in Nigeria to similar institutions in India, United States of America, etc a common practice. This development has made some Nigerians to lose confidence in the ability of the nation’s healthcare institutions to deliver quality healthcare.
Recent figures released by the Indian High Commission show that 47 percent of Nigerians visiting India in the year 2012 did so to get medical attention, while the remaining 53 percent did so for other reasons. The 47 percent of Nigerians who visited India for medical purposes amounted to 18,000 visas issued, spending N41.6 billion ($260 million) in scarce foreign exchange in the process.
Experts have identified low standard of patient care, absence of world-class hospitals and diagnostic centres, the stunted growth of the healthcare system, poor pipeline for high skills, poor health value chain, and low health insurance coverage as responsible for weak demand for healthcare services, resulting in poor economics of scale for hospital services in the country.
Furthermore, paucity of equity funds (inappropriate loan structure, short tenor and high interest rate), poor economics of scale resulting in weak cost absorption and recovery, weak branding, poor governance structure, absence of professional management at strategic level, poor staffing in terms of number and specialties of doctors and other healthcare providers have led to the low standard of care in Nigeria.
Reversing the medical tourism problem in Nigeria, experts believe, must be holistic and imperative, with the aim of developing the private sector healthcare, in line with the five-point agenda of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), an arm of the World Bank.
They believe there is need to improve access to capital, develop and enforce quality standards, mobilise public and donor money to the private sector, modify local policies and regulations to foster the role of the private sector and foster Risk Pooling Programmes (Health Insurance).
More importantly, unlocking the market potential for health services in the country will create an enabling environment for the private sector to grow, thereby ensuring Nigeria itself becomes a destination for medical tourism, rather than a source of exodus.