The Devastating Impact of Medical Tourism on the Nigerian Healthcare System

The healthcare system in Nigeria is facing numerous challenges. The country’s poor healthcare

facilities and the migration of healthcare professionals make it a popular target for countries who

want to get customers for medical tourism treatment.

Medical tourism is a booming industry around the world, with many countries offering affordable

healthcare and high-quality facilities for patients from other countries. Nigeria can take

advantage of this market as one of the most popular destinations for commerce in Africa.

In this article, we will look at some of the factors that have made patients seek medical care outside Nigeria and how we could make Nigeria an attractive medical tourism destination.

Medical tourism refers to traveling abroad for health care services due to higher quality, lower

costs, or better availability of procedures and treatments not available locally. It is also referred

to as medical travel or; health tourism.

Outside the government-owned hospitals, Nigeria has several private hospitals that offer

healthcare at affordable prices. Some of these hospitals are operated by expatriates who have

settled in Nigeria permanently while others are owned by Nigerians trained physicians and those who studied abroad, returned home to setup a practice. Some of these hospitals have been

recognized by foreign patients as offering high-quality healthcare at reasonable costs.

You can get medical care in these facilities, at a fraction of what it would cost you abroad.

Nigerian doctors are highly qualified as their counterparts in other countries and with the right tools can deliver quality healthcare to the community. The average cost of a consultation with a Nigerian doctor is $30 - 40; while an average treatment session in the country cost $80 - 100.

These factors should have made the country a beneficiary of the economic gains brought by medical tourism, but a lot of factors have made our healthcare services unattractive to this market.

Medical tourism is a major source of revenue for developing economies because it brings in foreign exchange and creates employment opportunities for locals.

According to a report by The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), global medical tourism

will generate $215 billion by 2022, up from $138 billion in 2016. This means that the industry

has grown by about 20% annually over the past decade.

India and other South Asian developing countries are becoming popular destinations for medical

tourism. Other destinations include Morocco, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Europe, and United States.

Nigeria is a country that has a lot of potentials. It has a huge population which makes it very

attractive to foreign investors. Unfortunately, the government has not been able to make use

of its resources in the best way possible.

A study in 2013 categorized factors patients consider before choosing to embark on medical

tourism into four groups: inadequacies of the healthcare infrastructure and equipment; health

workers and their attitude to work; medical costs; and tourism.

Other studies have identified several factors that lead medical tourism out of Nigeria. One of

them is the poor funding and investment in medicine and health care by the government. This has led to the poor state of healthcare facilities in the country where people must wait for months before

they can be treated.

Another factor is the high cost of living, especially among middle-class families who cannot

afford private clinics or hospitals because they are expensive. This means that most Nigerians

cannot afford private healthcare services and therefore rely on public hospitals or clinics which

offer cheap treatment but do not provide quality services because they are underfunded,

poorly staffed, and lack the necessary equipment and adequate drugs to deliver quality care.

In addition to this, there is a shortage of doctors who want to practice in Nigeria because

they are not paid well enough compared to doctors working abroad like in India or Thailand who

can earn more than what they could earn back home in Nigeria after years of hard work

and dedication.

In summary, lack of proper funding in public hospitals in Nigeria, the poor state of healthcare facilities, the high cost of medicine in Nigeria, very few highly specialized clinicians and hospitals, poor environmental sanitation, and bad government healthcare policies are all contributors to the need to access care outside the country.

The disadvantage of medical tourism includes the impact it has on the Nigerian economy due to

the huge amount spent on medical practitioners abroad, lack of confidence in our own health systems at home, lack of regulations in some countries which may lead to exploitation or unethical practices among others, and the poor continuum of care post-treatment.

The problems that cause medical tourism out of Nigeria can be solved by addressing the funding of the healthcare systems which will help provide better healthcare facilities across the country with up-to-date equipment for diagnostic and treatment purposes, make available better medications for treatment of most diseases, create proper specialist centers in the country, and staffing these facilities with well-trained healthcare providers. The implication is that Nigerian healthcare providers would raise the standard of their practice with these changes and, the current trend of medical tourism could reverse consequently. Besides winning over potential Nigerian migrants to seek medical care locally, the Nigerian healthcare providers could potentially attract foreign nationals too. We can also compete with other nations in the billion-dollar global medical tourism market.