Emmanuel Ugwu-Nwogo in Umuahia
Governor Peter Mbah’s drive to reverse medical tourism and halt the attendant capital flight remains on course, the Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of Enugu International Hospital (EIH), Professor Sam Agwu, has said.
He gave the assurance while speaking with journalists at the site of the 300-bed health facility located on Rangers Avenue Enugu, which is almost ready for inauguration with state of the art medical equipment already installed.
“Enugu International Hospital represents a translation of Governor Mbah’s vision into reality. He wants to reverse medical tourism,” he said.
Available records show that Nigeria currently loses an estimated $1.2 billion to $2.39 billion annually to outbound medical travel or medical tourism undertaken by political leaders and the rich.
It is also estimated that nearly 60 per cent of the capital outflow is driven by four clinical specialities: oncology, cardiology, nephrology and orthopaedic surgery.
But Prof. Agwu said the Enugu International Hospital was specifically conceived to make available here in Enugu all those advanced medical services that privileged Nigerians seek overseas.
He assured that “we will be able to scale down the outflow by 40 percent within the first year of operation” going by topnotch medical services and cutting-edge medical equipment that would be available at the facility.
According to him, after stemming the tide of Nigerians going abroad in search of healthcare, EIH would be positioned to start attracting patients from outside Nigeria, including Europe and America.
The reason, he said is that oversea patients would find it cheaper to come to Enugu and access the same high quality medical care they receive in their own countries.
“We’re going to have different sections, centres of excellence. Okay, so we’re going to have cancer centre. And within the cancer centre, we’re going to be having medical, surgical, and radiology treatment for cancers.
“Then we’re going to have the cardiac and vascular centre, where we can carry out open heart surgery, how we can basically treat vascular nature of the body,” he said.
Prof. Agwu revealed that a “top notch cardiothoracic surgeon is coming in from UK to be the chief medical officer of this place. And that will give us a double edge, because he will not only run the medical outfit here, he’s going to help us train a lot of cardiac surgeons in this facility”.
He further stated that EIH would have nuclear medicine capability, emphasising that “we’re going to be having one of the most modern state-of-the-art equipment for nuclear medicine”.
“It’s called a PET (positron emission tomography) scan, and there are very few in the world, all over the world. I think there’s about two, two modern ones in Nigeria. We’re going to produce the nuclear material called cyclotron, here on site,” he said.
Prof. Agwu stated that nuclear medicine is very helpful in the treatment of cancer as “the management of cancer (using CT scans) now has now gone beyond organ level”.
“PET scan is able to look at individual cells, molecular cells using radioactive materials. And those radioactive materials, cyclotrons, will be produced here”.
“So (PET scan) enables us to actually diagnose things before it’s evident to the naked eye. And then also enables us to monitor the treatment that will be given to patients,” he added.
The CEO said that neuroscience medicine would be available at the international health facility, meaning that any issue that has to do with the brain and nervous system would be handled at the EIH.
“We have the renal specialist centre as well. We’re going to combine what we call now, Cardiorenal Centre. That’s what’s going to happen here. We will see the cutting-edge technology that we have to support our mission here,” he said.
Indeed, an array of already installed medical equipment that Prof. Agwu described as the latest models, are on display in the various sections of the hospital waiting for inauguration. They include CTScan, MRI machines, and mammographic machine.
He assured that when it begins operation, any patient that walks into the Enugu International Hospital, “we owe that patient” the best medical care which would be provided with dignity and compassion.