The Federal Government has disclosed plans to reduce the rate at which Nigerians seek medical care abroad and grow the country’s health sector.
The Minister of State for Health, Dr. Iziaq Salako, who spoke on Friday at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport (NAIA) in Abuja on arrival from the BRICS conference in Brazil, stated that most nations in the world have similar health challenges.
He said: “The challenges of most countries in health are similar to the health issues that we also face in our country; neglected tropical diseases like tuberculosis, leprosy and others.
“There are challenges of non-communicable diseases like hypertension, diabetes, so we had discussions around how to cooperate, how to learn from one another to ensure that we can address some of these challenges”.
He explained that challenges also around data governance, deployment of artificial intelligence into the health sector, and use of data health systems were considered paramount to the growth of an efficient world health system.
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“All these are very useful for us to align because one of the key priorities of President Bola Tinubu is to reverse the direction of medical tourism from outbound to inbound. A lot more can be done in the country.
“Quite several people who would have gone abroad for health care will now be staying in Nigeria. We also see the possibility of servicing the entire West African region.
“Nigeria is the only West African country as a member of BRICS, so we see a lot of possibilities around that.”
As you know, Nigeria became a partner member this year, which is a recognition of the strategic position of Nigeria as a country by the organisation”.