Nigerians tackle govt over $1.2b annual loss to medical tourism

For quite a number of years now, Nigerians have been lamenting over the preference by public officials to travel overseas for medical treatment of even ailments that are as simple as malaria, instead of fixing and making use of the country’s medical facilities.

This practice is particularly more pronounced among politicians and some top government officials, as well as some wealthy private individuals.

Most often, politicians and government officials embark on such trips using public funds at the expense of the poor masses, whose wealth is being squandered, and who ordinarily deserve good, efficient and effective medical facilities.

Many Nigerians are not happy over the development and their anger is quite understandable.

Their anger equally flows from the fact that these public officers who use the taxpayers’ money to seek medical treatment from good hospitals abroad, prefer to waste the country’s resources in another man’s land, thereby boosting another country’s economy, while leaving the Nigerian economy to suffer.

Those who express this sentiment also argue that these sets of public officers control the levers of power at different levels of government, meaning that they are in a vantage position to fix the country’s health sector so that both the rich and the poor can have access to good medical care.

The implication, according to some Nigerians, is that some of them die in these foreign countries as they try to get medical care. Their deaths, in turn, cost the country a fortune most often, as the cost of bringing them back home plus the hospital bills are all borne by the Nigerian government.

Another worry about the drama is that most of these foreign hospitals where Nigeria’s public officers rush to for medical care are dominated by Nigerian medical personnel, who escaped from the country in search of greener pastures.

Last week, Nigeria’s former president, Muhammadu Buhari who was on such a medical trip to London passed on. It was the Federal Government that took care of every bill ranging from the hospital bill to the cost of transport back home.