Jambo Africa Online’s West African Editorial Correspondent, AFOLABI OSHO, chats with the Chief Medical Director, Dr Olalekan Olatise, on how he has made his kidney treatment facility attractive in Abuja, Nigeria…
Dr Olalekan Olatise, a Nigerian Consultant Nephrologist/Transplantation Physician, has established a kidney treatment medical centre in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. “Kidney is becoming the next pandemic throughout the world,” he says.
The hospital, which is named the Zenith Medical & Kidney Centre and came into existence in 2011, prides itself in having attracted highly experienced medical experts who are compassionate and are endowed with outstanding expertise in the treatment of kidney ailments. This centre has emerged as a leading kidney treatment facility in the entire west African region.
Afolabi Osho – why are you focused on kidney disease?
Dr Olalekan Olatise: I am passionate about treating kidney diseases, from days of my training as medical student till graduation. I decided to specialise in nephrology, which is a sub specialisation in medicine, knowing fully well that kidney diseases may grow into a pandemic around the world.
I realised that Nigerians will need this kind of healthcare. I came back home to Nigeria to setup this kidney treatment centre where Nigerian patients will have good healthcare and I do it with a passion.
Afolabi Osho: What is then your mission to set up the Zenith Medical & Kidney Centre in Abuja?
Dr Olalekan Olatise: I came back to Nigeria to cater for the needs of patients with kidney diseases. I realised that there’s need to take this seriously, so I setup the Zenith Medical & Kidney Centre to treat patients with compassion and we established one of the best medical centres in the country and west Africa as a whole.
That’s my goal for having Zenith Medical & Kidney Centre as the best in Africa.
As you can now see that we are trying to do something which is not commonly done in the country. One of them is our molecular laboratory where we can check or match the DNA of any person who wants any form of organ with another person for organ transplantation easily now.
It is a breakthrough for us and gradually we shall move towards making it the best hospital in the world. If you can check out the International Nephrologist Society, you will see that we have been certified as one of the International Nephrologist intervention training centre in the world and we are the only one representing Africa among the 12 centres in the world.
Afolabi Osho: What do you understand by medical tourism?
Dr Olalekan Olatise: What I understand by medical tourism is that when someone goes to another country for medical treatments hoping to get treatment.
Afolabi Osho: Why do want to reverse declines in medical tourism through medical services?
Dr Olalekan Olatise: One way this country is losing most of its foreign exchange is through medical tourism. I hope the government can realise this. Someone put it that Nigerian economy is losing 1.2 billion US Dollars each year. People also acquiring education abroad is another way we are losing foreign exchange. If the country Nigeria can save this amounts, it will help her economy.
But the government should not just look only at the oil sectors as revenue generators. You see, both health and education are key to human development indices of a country and critical to them to help the development of a country.
It is not acceptable for us to spend 1.2 billion US dollars on medical tourism abroad.
Our government should build more state of art the hospitals in the country to curb revenue loss.
We shouldn’t be losing revenue to medical tourism abroad if we have state of the art hospitals in the country; we need not to travel abroad.
No one is expected that 213 million people will need medical services abroad. We need to solve our problems here at home.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of these revenues are lost to the medical and educational tourism. My advice is that we take this seriously.
This hospital is trying to play it by reversing medical tourism out of Nigeria and attract a lot of patients into the west African region – already there many coming in from such areas as the UK, USA and many other places for kidney disease treatments.
Afolabi Osho: What is the capacity of the hospital?
Dr Olalekan Olatise: At the moment the hospital is having 100 beds, 5 intensive care units (ICU), 12 High Dependency Units, 36 Dialysis units and we have coped very well with patients – our record of attendance of outpatients is 39 000 just last year alone.
At present we are doing an average of 15 kidney transplants monthly and 15 000 kidney transplants yearly. Except for the COVID-19 year where the turnout was low because of the restrictions.
We are right now building 200 bed facilities behind the hospital.
Afolabi Osho: How do you think Abuja can be remodelled as a major medical tourism hub in West Africa and Africa?
Dr Olalekan Olatise: Abuja can really be remodelled into a medical tourism hub in Africa because it has an international airport and in addition the daily regional air flights can really contribute to developing Abuja into a medical tourism hub which will be useful for many patients from many smaller African countries coming for medical services here. Beyond this, Abuja is home to the diplomatic corps who may use our services and also promote them to their countries.
There are many private hospitals specialising in specific disease conditions like we are known for kidney treatment and transplantation. I believe the future is good and bright for the country.