Outbound medical tourism, a tendency to patronize foreign medical facilities at the expense of the local ones, has over the years taken the better part of Nigerian leaders and the elites generally. The predilection for this practice has, in fact, become more of an obsession among the top echelon of our society.
The precipitous trend is, however, causing the nation international odium. Nigerian leaders and elites have continued to literally expose the nation’s putrid medical innards to the rest of the world by always imperturbably and shamelessly flying abroad to treat every mundane medical condition, leaving the nation’s healthcare system teetering.
Former President Muhammadu Buhari, who passed on penultimate Sunday(May his soul rest in peace), would be the second Nigerian leader to have died in London after a prolonged sickness for which he had been frequenting the United Kingdom’s capital right from his days in office.
President Umar Shehu Musa-Yar’Adua was the first leader to have died also in London. He breathed his last on May 5, 2010, just two years into his first term in office. Mrs Stella Obasanjo, former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s First Lady then, also died in office on October 23, 2005 at a private clinic in Puerto Banus, Marbella, Spain, while undergoing tummy tuck, a surgical procedure also known as abdominoplasty.
At the time of ex-President Buhari’s demise, another former Head of State, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, was recuperating in London, having been just discharged from the same hospital. Buhari’s nephew, Mamman Daura, was also receiving treatment from the same hospital and had to eventually follow the presidential train that brought the body home.
President Bola Tinubu himself, shortly before his inauguration in May, 2023, stirred some concern back home, as he was a regular face in Paris, France’s capital city, undergoing treatment for an undisclosed ailment.
Former Military President, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, goes abroad as a yearly ritual to treat radiculopathy, a medical condition believed to have originated from an injury he sustained during the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War.
The former Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, the protagonist of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) drivers seeking to save the country by unseating the incumbent, almost lost his cool when an interviewer asked him shortly before the 2023 presidential election if he would be satisfied patronizing local healthcare system should he win the poll.
He said without any qualm that he would either travel abroad for his medical attention or fly in the medical experts any time he needs them. He did not promise, even if only perfunctorily, that he would do anything about the nation’s tottering healthcare system. That was not an issue to him.
Quite oddly too, Buhari’s Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, an otherwise first class journalist, declared impetuously that his principal (Buhari) would have died long ago if he had relied on Nigeria’s healthcare system. Adesina was saying this after the government he served had done two terms of eight years and the nation’s health institutions remain ghosts of themselves!
The practice by our leaders at all levels and Nigerians of means to fly abroad for all kinds of medical conditions, from the infinitesimal to the serious, has become more or less a status symbol. They often ‘advertise’ such expeditions with flourish and pride without being pricked in their conscience.
The trend is ostensibly driven by the perceived inadequacies of the Nigerian healthcare system and the allure of better facilities and services in other countries. But the whole thing smacks of leadership failure and irresponsibility because the nation bleeds from the capital flight that it engenders.
The nation loses billions of dollars annually to this inglorious trend, with significant spending on oncology, orthopedics, nephrology and cardiology. Ailments like cancer, kidney disease, and cardiovascular issues are some of the life-threatening medical conditions to which our leaders and other wealthy Nigerians seek succour abroad.
Nigerians seek better equipped facilities and specialized care not readily available at home.
They loathe to patronize the local healthcare system because they believe Nigerian facilities lack quality and advanced technology that can handle complex procedures.
Specifically, available data shows that Nigerians spend an estimated $1 billion annually on outbound medical tourism, with a significant portion of this humongous amount going to countries like India, South Africa, Dubai, China, UK, US, Egypt, Germany and Malaysia, among others.
Yet, the most tragic irony of this rush to seek alternative medical solutions abroad is that Nigerian medical personnel are some of the experts who attend to these leaders and other well-to-do Nigerians in many hospitals abroad. These are medical doctors and other professionals forced to relocate abroad by the lackluster welfare conditions and acute dearth of essential medical infrastructure back home.
This rankles with a lot of Nigerians, especially the vulnerable segments of society who are imperiled by the criminal neglect of our healthcare system by successive, unconscionable Nigerian leaders, an indecorous development that has left the health sector prostrate.
Yet, many of those foreign countries which Nigerians are flocking to are far less endowed in terms of natural, mineral and even human resources than Nigeria. What they have is what we lack: a conscientious, honest and proactive leadership ready to serve their people.
Imagine our leaders shunning this impolitic outbound medical tourism and instead investing the $1 billion being dissipated into that sheer profligate adventure into upgrading Nigeria’s medical infrastructure! Indeed, that amount is enough to turn our comatose health institutions into world class standards, comparable to those abroad.
The damage that this prostrate health situation has brought to the hapless and poor population is incalculable, because they have been boxed into a cul-de-sac, a fait accompli. They, therefore, have no choice but patronize the ‘deaths traps’ that many of the neglected medical facilities in the country have literally become.
Many ordinary Nigerians cannot even afford the cost of medicare in those places. They resort to self-medication instead. And those who have no means to buy drugs that have become astronomical make do with herbal alternatives!
Gone were the days when some of the nation’s health institutions, especially at the tertiary level — the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan; Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Lagos; University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Nsukka, and Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABTH), Zaria — can compare favourably with similar medical facilities all over the world. They were top notch as ‘centres of excellence’ attracting patients and experts, even from foreign countries.
Today, unfortunately, that medical glory as well as stellar accomplishments in other sectors have been reversed by successively inept and corrupt leaderships. The decimation of the nation’s public and civil services through nepotism, quota system over which merit is now being sacrificed on the altar of federal character and other egregious practices as well as the pillaging of the treasury over the years have bled the nation dry. They have eroded quality service. Mediocrity has consequently supplanted excellence in high places.
Over time, corruption no longer slithers in fright like a snake under the table. It has grown into an octopus that now struts in sheer bravura. Consequently, sectors and institutions that had been the pride of the proverbial ‘Giant of Africa’ have slid into sheer ‘carcasses’ because maintenance votes are being blindly looted.
One of the casualties is Nigeria’s health sector, which is today so comatose that people are dying through common procedures in many hospitals, owing to the gradually deteriorating medical infrastructure and uncongenial work conditions. This is why most of our best medical experts are fleeing abroad in their numbers, as noted earlier.
The Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Prof. Muhammad Pate, lamented recently that over 16,000 Nigerian doctors had left the country in the last five to seven years to seek greener pastures in other countries.
Available data shows that an estimated 2,000 medical doctors leave Nigeria yearly and no fewer than 5,407 Nigerian trained doctors are currently working with the British National Health Service in UK. And over 5,000 medical personnel— physicians, dentists, nurses and other health professionals of Nigerian descent— are also in US health workforce.
A medical expert, who analyzed the exodus of medical personnel abroad said: “A lot of people think it’s just a money issue. No, it’s not. Of course, doctors need good pay too, which is part of what they are using as bait to lure them abroad. But the major problem is dearth of essential equipment that are lacking in most hospitals in Nigeria. Doctors are not happy about it at all.”
According to him, lack of critical surgical equipment and medical supplies, which can hinder effective treatment; the dearth of essential equipment like anesthesia machines, operating room equipment, and basic supplies, along with other factors like low salaries and lack of career advancement, are pushing our doctors to look for jobs in other countries.
“Anesthesia machines are crucial for providing safe and effective anesthesia during surgery, and their absence can create significant risks. And operating room equipment such as basic tools like surgical instruments (graspers, clamps, scissors, bone cutters, needles/sutures, needle drivers), sterilizers, and more advanced equipment like electrosurgical units are all essential for safe surgeries.
“Others are life-support equipment like ventilators, defibrillators, and other life-saving equipment, which are essential for managing complications during surgery and in the post-operative period; just as resuscitation bags, nasogastric tubes, and nasopharyngeal airways are vital for emergency situations and managing patients after surgery; but most of these equipment are either lacking or in short supply.”
The situation is pathetic enough. We admonish the authorities to immediately set in motion moves to halt the bothersome outbound medical tourism. The nation’s medical trajectory must be drastically recalibrated to gradually engender more of medical tourism inflow and less of outflow.
We believe declaring a state of emergency in the health sector is the first immediate step to tackling the problem, as that will enable the government to pay particular and more serious attention to the issue of our doctors and others leaving the country in their numbers, with a view to luring many of them back.
The government should then tackle the endemic problem of lack of equipment in most hospitals, which is one of the strongest reasons our doctors and other medical personnel are leaving to seek better opportunities abroad.
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