·         SIGNS CONCESSION AGREEMENT ON MANAGEMENT OF THE FACILITY

In its bid to stop the spate medical trips abroad as well as build local capacity especially for ailments that should be treated locally but where expertise and facilities are not available to manage them, the Lagos State Government through the Ministry of health has built and opened for use of the public; the first ultra modern cardiac and renal centre at Gbagada area of Lagos.

The facility which is designed to handle heart and kidney related disease also offers out-patient services, diagnostic services, ultrasound, CT scan, Echo cardiography, Stress Electrocardiography, laboratory services, fluoroscopy, ocular investigation for complications from hypertension, diabetes and renal conditions, haemo-dialysis for acute and chronic kidney diseases with 24 dialysis machine, admission for all cardiac conditions that requires hospital stay, critical care in intensive care unit (ICU) and high dependency wards, cardiac catherization, non invasive cardiology, open heart surgery, renal surgery, nursing and diabetic services, rehabilitation services and corporate wellness program.

The State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Jide Idris who gave reasons for embarking on the project while signing the concession agreement for the take-off and management of the Centre noted that State government through the Ministry of Health considers it appropriate and timely to have a befitting cardiac and renal centre due to the increasing number of patients presenting with end stage renal failure adding also that the lack of a purpose built renal specialist centre, the periodic nature of the cardiac and renal missions which has limited the number of beneficiaries and the need to conserve the financial resources currently being expended in the management of patients with renal and cardiac diseases in foreign countries are key reasons for building the facility.

Idris noted that the cardiac and renal disease constitute a growing health burden globally stressing that there is what is called a triple jeopardy in the health sector especially in Lagos and Nigeria which require efforts of stakeholders in State health system to address.

Said he “we have what we call double jeopardy but now it is triple jeopardy in the sense that we do not only have problems with communicable diseases, we are now having problems with non-communicable diseases, and the third one has to do with mental health. But this project is trying to address the major aspect of the non-communicable disease burden”.

Idris added that the non-communicable disease burden prompted the State government to embark on the screening of people for hypertension and diabetes which are major contributor to the cardiac and renal ailment burden as part of the of its preventive and health promotion strategy stressing that the study from screening conducted State-wide showed that roughly 20% of the people who were screened were hypertensive and between 5 and 6% were diabetic.

“Not only that, we also do know that these two disease burden jointly cause serious complications in people who have these problems; and once you have these problems, you have them for live if they are not properly treated”, Idris explained.

The Commissioner also noted that State government has over the years always earmark as part of its free health policy quite a huge chunk of its budget to sponsor people abroad on various medical problem that could not be treated in the country where the needed expertise and facilities are not available stressing that it is the copulation of these factors that prompted the State government to build the cardiac and renal centre.

Said he, “a copulation of these factors prompted the need for us to build facilities locally, find a way of staffing them locally to provide the needed services to treat people of these ailments, reduce the number of money we are spending to sponsor people abroad, and more importantly to build local capacity”.

Idris also opined that setting up of the facility will help bring back home Nigerian medical specialist referring to it as a way of ‘brain gain’ to defeat the ‘brain drain’ phenomenon stressing that over the years; quite a number of indigenous medical personnel have left the country for greener pastures outside of the country due to lack of infrastructure and facilities they could exhibit their skills with.

Said he,“we have over 2000 specialist in the United States, similar number in Europe and Canada. And this is one way of brain gain instead of brain drain because if you establish a facility with the right equipment and infrastructure, we can use that to attract the specialist abroad back home where they can exhibit their expertise and at the same time use to build local capacity here. That was the basic underlining reason why we decided to embark on this project”.

The Commissioner explained that the cardiac and renal centre building project started in 2008 when the award was made to messr deaux project Limited stressing that facility which was also equipped by the company will be managed privately through a five year operation and management concession by a suitably qualified competent consortium of medical professionals renewable for another five years term subject to satisfactory performance and mutual agreement of the parties wherein the proponent will provide all the health care services; clinical and non-clinical and total facilities management required for the value-engineering Renal and Cardiac Centre.

He noted that the need to get a suitably qualified competent consortium that has the needed requirement to run the facility prompted the state to opt for a public-private partnership agreement through the office of public-private partnership adding that this aim results in the appointment of Renescor Health Limited Liability Partnership to run and manage the facility.

Idris listed training of local medical personnel especially the establishment of a state government sponsored foreign capacity building for medical personnel as part of the concession agreement aside the operation and management concession.

The Commissioner for Finance who doubles as the Supervising Head for the Public-Private Partnership Office, Mr. Ayo Gbeleyi noted that the reason for opting for qualified competent consortium of medical professionals to manage the facility through a PPP initiative was due to dearth of appropriate competent staff in this environment and the highly specialized nature of the equipment and services to be rendered within the facility.

He added that the PPP office is quite convince of the capabilities of the private managers stressing that they are expected to provide quality services in line with international best practices, promote medical tourism, provide training field to develop the capacity of state’s own health personnel and facilitate a gradual paradigm shift on dependence on foreign with the skilled empowerment of local professionals.

The Managing Director of Renescor Health Limited Liability Partnership Dr. Ladi Awosika who was present at the event to sign the concession agreement gave kudos to the State government for building the state-of-the-art facilities which he described as first of its kind in sub Saharan Africa taking out South Africa and Angola.

He added that the cardiac and renal centre has been built to very good specification that specialists that have signed up with the company attest to, stressing that the centre has facility for telemedicine which will make every procedure going on this facility to be reviewed by colleagues anywhere in the world thereby ensuring that training and cutting edge facility therapy will be available at the facility.

Awosika explained that Messr Renescour is made up mainly of Nigerians specialists who have been in the Diaspora and could not get any space to work in Nigeria stressing that when they saw what was on ground, they pledged to contribute their quota through the facility.

“As at today we have about 200 Nigerian specialists who have signed on to be a part of this. Some of them have decided that it will not even be for money, rather they will take one or two week vacation to be at this centre to impact their knowledge and skills to the people of Lagos in particular and Nigeria in general”, He said.

Awosika noted that more facilities of the magnitude of the cardiac and renal centre is required in the State to be able to satisfy the demand of more than 21 million resident of the States and promote medical tourism in Lagos. He thereafter pledged that his comp