Heritage Bank offers to fund the purchase of medical equipment in bid to end medical tourism

HERITAGE Bank has launched an ambitious scheme in partnership with Africanmed and the Chinese community in Nigeria aimed at developing the country’s health sector and reducing the rate of medical tourism by Nigerians.

It is estimated that Nigeria loses about $1.3bn to medical tourism annually as sick patients travel to countries like India, the UK, the US, Thailand, Turkey, etc in search of treatment due to a lack of local facilities. Nigeria is currently rated by the World Health Organisation as 187th out of 190 countries in its health index and this failure of the health system is traceable to thriving foreign medical tourism by prominent Nigerians.

In a bid to address the crisis, Heritage Bank is offering capital to those wanting to bring medical equipment to Nigeria in a bid to get more Nigerians to receive treatment at home. Heritage Bank chief executive Ifie Sekibo, who unveiled the initiative at the maiden edition of the  Africanmed exhibition of top brands of medical equipment from China in Lagos, said there is an urgent need to reduce the huge foreign exchange which Nigerians spend every year on medical tourism.

He explained that Heritage Bank would find it easy to provide finance for interested buyers of the medical equipment from China because it already has a robust correspondent banking relationship with Deutsche Bank of China and Access Bank of China. According to Mr Sekibo, the relationship would enable Heritage Bank to seamlessly open letters of credit for interested buyers.

Mr Sekibo said since some of the equipment cost millions of dollars, the bank would not expect the buyers to tie down such heavy amount of money. He added that it will support interested buyers with robust loans that will enable them to acquire the equipment and pay back over a period of two years.