The Federal Government plans to establish six medical centres of excellence to stop medical tourism among Nigerians. The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe, disclosed this on Saturday at a town hall meeting in Ilorin where he gave account of his stewardship to constituents in Kwara Central Senatorial District.He said, “Medical tourism is a major issue we considered in the 2020 budget. As the chairman, Health Committee, we discussed extensively on how we can reduce it to the barest minimum; we engaged stakeholders including the federal Ministry of Health and heads of federal tertiary hospitals.
“What we want to do is to identify one centre per geopolitical zones that will be designated centre of excellence to treat what makes Nigerians to go out. Part of the main issue is the availability of certain specialised equipment, and we have used the 2020 budget to create cancer fund.
“We have also looked at the budget of various teaching hospitals and we identified some hospitals where we have allocated resources to make them to do better. The National Hospital in Abuja is one of such. If you look at the 2020 budget, it didn’t come from the executive; it was our initiative, to put certain resources in the national hospital for certain area of cancer treatment.”
Source: Punch
