The House of Representatives is considering a law to discourage international medical trip by public office holders in the country.
This is against the background of the terrible state of Nigeria’s health-care system due to government neglect and the huge drain on foreign exchange caused by the unchanging appetite of Nigerians for medical treatment overseas.
It is a ”Bill for an Act to Regulate International Trip for Medical Treatment by Public Officers to Strengthen the Health Institutions for Efficient Service Delivery and for Related Matters”.
The bill, which was consolidated with a similar proposal Tuesday, is being sponsored by Sergius Oseasichie Ogun (PDP, Edo), with its core legislative concerns as the prohibition of overseas medical trips by public officers without approval; regulate overseas medical trips by public officers and strengthen the health institutions for efficient service delivery and internal revenue generation.
Made up of 13 clauses, the sponsor said the bill was necessitated by the abuses arising from the opportunity offered public officers to seek medical treatment overseas.
Ogun said: “These abuses are many. On the pretext of fabricated medical conditions, many public officials simply disappear from Nigeria and abdicate their duties for lengthy periods, while their emoluments are being paid for the period and Nigeria is also footing the bill for their medical tours.
“Even those who have not fabricated their conditions abandon their official duties on account of simple ailments that can be treated in Nigeria.
“It is said that hundreds of Nigerians daily embark on medical tours to countries in Europe, America and Asia. A great number of these Nigerians are public officials.
“Pharmanews’ quotes the 2014 NMA Annual Report as stating that the Indian High Commission confirmed that Indian hospitals received 18,000 Nigerians on medical visa in 2012 alone and that these Nigerians spent about $260 million on those trips. That was just India and for one year.
“This gives us a picture of what Nigeria as a nation has sunk overall into medical tours by public officials and their kit and kin. There is an urgent need to curtail this anomaly.”
He noted further that even the nation’s Health Minister, Prof. Isaac Adewole, while representing President Muhammadu Buhari at the opening ceremony of the 56th annual general conference and delegates meeting of Nigeria Medical Association in Sokoto, also expressed concern at the development, whilst directing the immediate stoppage of sponsorship of foreign medical trips for government officials, especially with regards to conditions that can be handled in Nigeria.
“I give you an example of a Nigerian who was on an appointment to see a specialist in the US and on getting there, the hospital management told him to exercise patience because the specialist who was to attend to him was having some delay.
“He had to waste certain number of days and when the specialist came, behold, he was a Nigerian like him, and they greeted and started speaking ‘pidgin’.
“That’s the scenario we are faced with in the health sector where the problem is not that of manpower, because we have them in abundance.
“Let’s get the system right using adequate legislation and every other thing will fall into place. If such law was to exist, President Muhammadu Buhari wouldn’t have spent public funds in a London hospital,” he added.
The bill is soon expected to come up for second reading.
