Nigerians allocated approximately $2.38 million on foreign healthcare services between January and June 2024, according to a report by The PUNCH, referencing data from the Central Bank of Nigeria. The spending breakdown indicates that $2.3 million was spent in January, with minimal expenditures in the subsequent months—$0.01 million in March, $0.05 million in May, and $0.02 million in June. This marks a significant increase of $1.69 million compared to the $0.69 million spent in the second half of 2023.
However, when compared to the first half of 2023, where expenditures reached $3.13 million, the current spending reflects a decline of $0.75 million. This trend raises concerns about the persistent reliance on medical tourism despite recent efforts to enhance local healthcare services.
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President Bola Tinubu recently launched the Nigeria Sovereign Investment Authority, aimed at retraining 120,000 frontline health workers as part of a healthcare expansion initiative. He expressed optimism that such measures would help reverse the trend of Nigerians seeking medical care abroad.
Tanimola Akande, a public health professor at the University of Ilorin, emphasized that the rise in medical tourism spending highlights the ongoing need for improvements in domestic healthcare facilities. He urged the government to invest more in local health services to curtail the outflow of funds for medical treatment abroad and to address the issue of brain drain in the healthcare sector.
