Now marks the commencing of Bola Tinubu’s presidency in Nigeria. The incoming administration faces a challenging established of challenges, which include persistent insecurity and an unstable economic system.
One of the difficulties that proceeds to puppy Nigerian politicians is clinical tourism, or travel abroad to search for professional medical care. Nigerian elites devote massive sums on overseas health care – amounting to above US$ 7 billion involving 2016 and 2022, in accordance to the newspaper PUNCH.
It is significant small business for the abroad healthcare amenities, some of which have focused international promoting and welcome models, including arranging transportation and language solutions. Other individuals get the job done with medical tourism organizations to aid referrals.
The trade can also be rewarding for professional medical tourism facilitators in Nigeria. These could be medical practitioners or other brokers who refer effectively-heeled purchasers to healthcare companies abroad, obtaining a fee. The ethics can be murky.
Olusesan Makinde, the managing husband or wife of Feasible Knowledge Masters, a wellness and advancement consultancy, thinks that “there’s higher possible for abuse” in the process. He suggests that health care practitioners have an ethical obligation not to promote health-related tourism companies. This can lead to “physician-induced demand” for unneeded providers, as properly as a mismatch involving what is becoming marketed in shiny international campaigns and the true good quality of providers.
Outgoing Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari toasts incoming president Bola Tinubu in 2018. (Picture … [+]
Prevalent locations for Nigerian professional medical vacationers consist of India and the United kingdom. A single estimate is that for surgeries, 30,000 Nigerians went abroad in 2019. These contain orthopedic, cardiac, and other surgical procedures.
Some tragic surgical procedures cases involving Nigerian clinical tourists have become intercontinental news. In 2005, Nigeria’s previous first lady, Stella Obasanjo, died out of the blue in Spain through a liposuction course of action in which a tube was mistakenly inserted into her belly cavity, puncturing her colon. Four a long time later, the plastic surgeon was convicted of negligent homicide.
Kidney transplant surgeries are also executed on Nigerians overseas. In a notorious 2023 situation, Nigerian senator Ike Ekweremadu, his spouse Beatrice, and the health care provider Obinna Obeta were declared responsible of conspiracy in trafficking a 21-yr-previous street vendor from Lagos to the United kingdom in get to harvest his kidney and transplant it into the couple’s unwell daughter. The sufferer was in a position to escape just after overhearing of the plot’s details.
Health practitioner Obeta, who housed the sufferer, organized the transplant by means of a clinical tourism business charging £10,000. He ran a non-public medical center in Nigeria and experienced earlier gained a kidney transplant in London himself. Obeta claimed that he had been fearful to have the transplant for the Ekweremadus’ daughter carried out in Nigeria or India, because of to the superior death charge of the course of action.
These are severe cases, but they place to a url