By Francesca Hnageior
An India Specialist Hospital, Apollo Hospitals, has offered to train local doctors on the treatment of cancer.
The hospital said it was prepared to establish local medical infrastructure in Nigeria. Vice President-International, Apollo Hospitals, Dr. Karthik Anantharaman, who announced this in Abuja said his hospital wants to partner with local hospitals in Nigeria to help the country curb medical tourism.
India has become a medical destination for Nigerians seeking treatment for cancer and other serious ailments.
The hospital alone attends to between 1000 to 2000 patients from Nigeria yearly, Anantharam said.
According to him: ” We want to be partners in setting up local medical infrastructure in Africa, in Nigeria. So Apollo Hospital is now actually coming to Nigeria with a more strategic intent to train the local doctors.
“Likewise, we are now going to be partnering with many hospitals on training programme because we truly believe that if we can train the Nigerian doctors and the Nigerian doctors have the right skill sets to be able to treat patients locally, a lot more patients can benefit because not everyone will have the money to travel to India or travel to some other country to get the treatment.
“So if the local doctors have better training, better skills, then a lot of patients can be treated within the country.
“So that is our main focus now, to do the skill building, second main focus that we are doing is to have a partnership with local hospitals.
“We want to have stronger partnerships with local hospitals where we can actually have Apolo staff to be here to not just train the local doctors but also to offer full time medical care under partnerships and their operations and management contract.”
He also announced the plan of the hospital to invest in Oncology clinics in the country.
” So one of the more recent, you know, investments we are making is in the area of setting up daycare oncology clinics with very minimum investment.”
Highlighting the importance of partnering and training local doctors, Anantharam said: “So across the group, we see at least 100 -250 Nigerian patients that come to Apollo hospitals on a monthly basis, which means in a year at Apollo Hospital, we are treating at least about 1000 to 2200 Nigerian patients in a year across Apollo hospitals.
” These patients come to us for treatment in radiation, oncology, surgery operations, for surgical operations.
“They also come for advanced medical treatments as well across the group for various other treatments like kidney transplant, liver transplant, orthopedic surgeries, knee replacement and hip replacement, surgeries for cardiac surgeries like heart disease.”
He added: “So it is our strong endeavor in Apollo hospital that we are not here to just treat patients from Nigeria to come to Apollo.
“We want to be partners in setting up local medical infrastructure in Africa, in Nigeria.
” So Apollo Hospital is now actually coming to Nigeria with a more strategic intent to train the local doctors.”