Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of Lagos State, says the state is working on bridging its healthcare infrastructure gaps, acknowledging a hospital bed deficit of about 66,288 beds.
Sanwo-Olu, represented by the state Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi, said this during the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) Healthcare and Medical Expo on Thursday in Lagos.
He spoke on the theme: “Reversing Medical Tourism in Lagos State: Creating an Enabling Environment for Private Sector Investment”.
According to the governor, the state has 28 General Hospitals covering a population of 24 million residents, however, the hospitals have a total installed capacity of 3,717 beds.
Sanwo-Olu said that combined with staffing shortages, an insufficient core bed stock means that the hospitals were less able to cope with large influxes of patients.
According to him, this has ultimately impacted hospitals’ ability to provide safe and timely care and remains a major factor in defining the health-seeking behaviour of patients.
He said that the state had 34,995 hospital beds in the private sector and 3,717 in the public sector making 38,712 hospital beds.
“Going by WHO’s benchmark of five beds for every 1,000 people, Lagos requires 25 times the number of beds it currently has, to meet the healthcare needs of its population.
“To close this gap, the state will need at least 66 general hospitals.
“Given the fact that the government does not have the resources required to close this gap, the state will need to deploy innovative funding mechanisms that leverage the resources of the private sector,” he said.
The governor said the state would provide quality and standard model health facilities and stimulate the private sector to replicate the standards across the state with oversight from the Ministry of Health.
Sanwo-Olu said the state was working on restoring the healthcare sector into the mainstream economy and activating the invisible hand of the free market economy to make healthcare attractive for more investors.
This, he said, would reverse brain drain, accelerate brain gain, and neutralise outbound medical tourism.
He cited the DHIS 2023 report which showed that 12.5 million people accessed care at registered health facilities across the state in 2022, with 60 per cent of the figure utilising public health facilities.
“And so, when we look at medical tourism, what is it that our citizens in Lagos are looking for outside of Lagos state, outside of Nigeria?
“And our analysis shows that most patients leave Nigeria, leave Lagos, searching for orthopaedics, cardiology, oncology, neurology, and so on.
“And so, this data is very important for us in government. Because it tells us where we need to put our policy drives according to how we’re going to develop our speciality and our subspecialty disciplines in the state,” he said.
The governor said that the state’s holistic system revolved around upscaling governance, management, health insurance, primary and secondary facilities infrastructure, equipment, and human resources.
Sanwo-Olu reiterated his commitment to provide universal healthcare coverage and strengthen public-private partnerships to make Lagos the number one destination for medical tourism in Africa.
Similarly, Prof. Bala Audu, NMA President, urged the Federal and state governments to implement existing health policies, especially the National Policy on Health Workforce Retention.
“The singular implementation of this policy is enough to retain healthcare professionals and improve the retention rates of our hospitals so that they can be more dedicated to providing the required healthcare services to our citizens,” Audu said.
The NMA President also called for the provision of equipment and tools needed for the diagnosis and treatment of patients at healthcare facilities.
Audu stressed that there should be accessible and affordable to reduce out-of-pocket medical expenses.
Also, Dr Benjamin Olowojebutu, Chairman of the Local Organising Committee of the expo, said the event was to showcase the expertise available within the country toward reversing medical tourism.
“We have many well-established, highly specialised, well-equipped hospitals in this country that can handle many complex medical cases.
“We have a hospital that does 16 kidney transplants every month. We have a hospital that can do cardiovascular surgery in a few hours.
“We have a hospital coming from Niger, from Mali, to see what we do.
“So, it’s important we reverse medical tourism. And, it has to be driven by the Nigeria Medical Association so that we can give opportunities for people to know the healthcare indices, expertise and services available for us in Nigeria,” Olowojebutu said.
He stressed that many of the life-saving treatment methods are cost-effective and critical to reverse brain drain and medical tourism.