Gov Peter Mbah of Enugu State.
By Chinedu Adonu
For decades, the story of healthcare in Nigeria has been closely linked with medical tourism, as patients with complicated medical conditions travel abroad in search of specialized treatment. From the United Kingdom and United States to India and South Africa, Nigerians spend huge sums of money on medical care outside the country, thereby depleting the nation’s scarce foreign exchange needed direly to grow the economy.
But in Enugu, a different story is beginning to unfold courtesy of the government of Peter Mbah which set out to change the narrative 16 months ago when it started building the edifice that will serve humanity. There is an emerging healthcare transformation in the Enugu state. Enugu International Hospital, a new quaternary medical centre designed to provide highly specialised healthcare services and, ultimately, reverse the flow of patients seeking advanced treatment abroad will soon debut.
The vision, according to the Chief Executive Officer of the hospital, Prof. Sam Agwu, is simple but ambitious: bring advanced medicine closer to the people.
