Medical entrepreneurship pivotal to stopping medical tourism, brain drain — MDCAN president

President, Medical and Dental Consultants Association of Nigeria (MDCAN), Dr Victor Makanjuola, says by embracing medical entrepreneurship, Nigeria will be able to stem medical tourism, brain drain and capital flight.

Dr Makanjuola, speaking on the sideline of the inauguration of the Rencare-RHC Dialysis centre by the Redeemer’s Health Centre in partnership with Rencare Africa limited, stated that medical entrepreneurship will ensure the marriage between the private sector’s efficiency and resources and the public sector’s human capacity, thereby improving the health of Nigerians.

He stated that “one of the reasons for the exodus is the fact that people are not satisfied with their jobs; they are not able to do what they are trained for. By getting the human resource in the public sector to support ventures in the private sector geared towards improving the health of Nigerians, you will first address the issue of job satisfaction.

“People will begin to do what they are trained to do. They will have modern equipment they have been trained with abroad to work with, so there is job satisfaction. They will be a bit addressing remuneration too.

“So, in a way, we will be addressing poor remuneration of health workers in Nigeria and also low job satisfaction, two factors contributing to brain drain. This is reduced by the private sector coming in with equipment and additional resources and then tapping into the expertise of those in the public sector.

“Most of our facilities in the public sector are not very decent, which is why some with resources will rather go outside the country. But the private sector is able to provide the same ambience you see abroad; the same equipment you are going to use abroad and then tap into the human resource of the specialists who are around to render services – all to improve the quality of life and healthcare for the average Nigerian.

“We will really not do much if all our efforts are built on the government. The focus should partially shift to the private sector. The growth of almost every economy is driven by the private sector. We have seen what happened to the telecommunication sector. Almost every adult Nigerian has a phone compared to maybe three percent when it was the government handling the telecommunication sector.  We need that same seismic change in the health sector too.”

Dr Makanjuola stated that medical entrepreneurship is quite diverse and includes telemedicine, and video consultations.

“Medical entrepreneurship goes far beyond the public-private partnerships that we see in the public sector. It goes much beyond this,” he said.