Following the positive impact of its interventions in Nigeria’s healthcare system over the past two years, the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) on Thursday disclosed that it planned to invest, in collaboration with its partners, about $100 million in its Diagnostics and Oncology Expansion Programme for critical medical facilities in the country.
The NSIA’s Managing Director, Mr. Uche Orji, made this disclosure during an interactive session with journalists after the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the NSIA Healthcare Development and Investment Company (NHDIC), a subsidiary of the Authority, and representatives of the five federal medical centres and three participating states under the phase one of the expansion programme.
The investment expert clarified: “We are now, after two or three years of experience, feeling confident to now expand our footprint across the other states in the country and also expand the areas of therapy. So, the programme has gone beyond cancer and diagnostics.
“The amount we are projecting is various. Each of them requires certain level of investment. The diagnostic centre is under $5 million each while the Cancer Centre is somewhere between $12-20 million each depending on the infrastructure we are trying to build.
“So, each of these will be accessed and then the investment is going to be determined and also we will provide substantial working capital because we realize what makes these centres not to succeed in the past is the insufficient capital. Once you miss one capital cycle, equipment has to break down.
“So, we are looking at about $100 million investment during the expansion programme. This investment includes working capital which is necessary to keep the programme going”, Orji added.
The signatories to the programme’s latest agreements, which include Lease and Collaboration components, are Enugu, Kaduna, Kwara and Kaduna while the selected medical centres comprise Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital, Bauchi; and Usman Dan Fodio University Teaching Hospital, Sokoto.
Others are the Federal Medical Centre Asaba, Delta State; University of Uyo Teaching Hospital, Akwa Ibom State; and University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Oyo State.
The NSIA chief, who recalled the successful story of the NSIA’s intervention at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) about two years ago and the lessons learnt, said that the agency decided to extend its intervention in the health sector to other medical centres at federal and state levels in view of the huge benefits to the country.
He further explained that the agency planned, under the expansion programme, to raise new capital and also work with partners to attract the needed investment for the implementation of the programme in particular but more importantly to the nation’s health care sector.
Orji said the latest move was being undertaken by the Authority with a view to improving the quality of the medical centres, the skills of the manpower and by implication, reducing the rate at which Nigerian doctors are leaving the country and the spate of medical tourism of the country.
The Concept Note on the NSIA Health Expansion Programme Agreements indicates that the broader goal of the programme is to establish, in two phases, a portfolio of 23 diagnostic centres, seven catheterization labs and two oncology centres.
Pursuant to the signing of the agreements with the participating states and federal medical centres, funds will be deployed to build, equip, maintain and operate catheterization labs in Kwara, Oyo, Sokoto, Bauchi ad Delta States.
In addition, the funds will also be deployed to build, equip, maintain and operate private medical diagnostics centres in Enugu, Kaduna, Kwara, Akwa Ibom, Oyo, Sokoto, Bauchi and Delta States and also build, equip, maintain and operate an oncology centre for advanced radiotherapy treatment.
