Nigerians spent about $2.38m on foreign healthcare-related services from January to June 2024, findings by The PUNCH have shown.
This is according to a report from the Central Bank of Nigeria on the amount spent on health-related and social services under the sectoral utilisation of foreign exchange.
A breakdown of the report showed that $2.3m was spent in January; $0.00m in February; $0.01m in March; $0.00m in April; $0.05m in May; and $0.02m in June.
Our correspondent observed that the amount spent on foreign healthcare-related services in the first half of the year was more than that spent in the second half of 2023 from July to December, which was at $0.69m.
The development showed an increase of $1.69m of the amount spent from January to June this year.
However, compared to the figure for the first half of 2023, which was $3.13m, there was a reduction of $0.75m.
When President Bola Tinubu inaugurated the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, a healthcare expansion programme, through which 120,000 frontline health workers would be retrained, he said the move would reverse the trend of outbound medical tourism.
Commenting on the medical tourism spending, a professor of Public Health at the University of Ilorin, Kwara State and former National Chairman of the Association of Public Health Physicians of Nigeria, Tanimola Akande, said the reported increase in medical tourism cost, as reported by the CBN, was an indication that so much money in hard currency was still being spent to seek medical care outside the country.
Akande highlighted that “Medical tourism is often perpetuated by elites. This is an indication that recent investment in high-class private health facilities in Nigeria has not been able to remarkably reduce the cost of medical tourism in Nigeria.
“The money spent on medical tourism, if channelled to improving local health facilities, will go a long way to reduce medical tourism in Nigeria.
“The government should continue to promote investment in quality healthcare services in Nigeria. The government also needs to do a lot more to reduce the brain drain challenge and provide an enabling environment for high-class quality health care to flourish in Nigeria.”
