Nigeria loses an estimated $1.1 billion every year to medical tourism, the African Export-Import Bank has said, warning that the trend is not only draining foreign exchange but also stalling the growth of the country’s healthcare sector.
Speaking at the 32nd Afreximbank Annual Meetings in Abuja on Thursday, June 26, the Bank’s Export Development Managing Director, Mrs Oluranti Doherty, described the situation as a major setback for local investment.
“We had our member countries losing a lot of foreign exchange to medical tourism,” she said. “We just talked about Nigeria, where our medical tourism annually is about $1.1bn.
“The entire continent is about $7bn just because we can’t help ourselves when we come up with chronic diseases. That’s money that’s going to other economies, building their institutions.”
Doherty stressed that the consistent outflow of funds for treatment abroad represents missed opportunities to develop healthcare infrastructure and strengthen the broader economy.
She also raised concerns about the continuous loss of skilled health professionals to foreign countries.
“Another thing we noted was a great way we were losing a lot of our good talents,” she said. “The best of talents in the health sector were going out of the continent, working in places such as India, Asia, the Middle East, America, and that often was an issue.”
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She noted that Afreximbank had anticipated these challenges and responded by launching its Health and Medical Tourism Programme in 2012.
One of the bank’s major projects under the initiative is the Africa Medical Center of Excellence (AMCE), currently being developed in Abuja.
“Afreximbank was innovative. I call us the innovative financier, the innovative investors. We recognised this part since 2012, and we set about doing something about it,” she said.
The AMCE, she explained, is a 170-bed facility fitted with cutting-edge medical technology, including a three-Tesla MRI, an 18 MeV cyclotron, and a 20-bed intensive care unit. The bank has invested over $450 million into the project.
“Afreximbank had to go where no one has gone before; Afreximbank’s leaders adhered to the dreamers.
“The AMCE aims to provide healthcare services comparable to global standards, not just African standards. I’m talking about global standards. I’m talking about Africans coming up with solutions to challenges,” she said.
Doherty urged Nigerian authorities and others across Africa to restore public confidence in their domestic health systems and adopt policies that guarantee affordable, quality care at home.