Nigeria to save Nbillions in air ambulance services

Air ambulance services have been described as the enabler that would improve Nigerian healthcare, by improving access to hospitals and saving the government many billions of dollars.

This was disclosed by Founder, Flying Doctors, Nigeria, Dr. Ola Brown who said the sector could be helped by concentrating expert resources which also help to reduce healthcare spending.

She lamented the high cost of healthcare in the country, saying the Federal government does not have enough money to place centers of medical excellence in every single state.

She said, if there cannot be a center of medical excellence in every state, then Nigeria needs to develop its air ambulance infrastructure led by companies such as the Flying Doctors Nigeria Air Ambulance service, to ensure that patients can access healthcare.

The Flying Doctors, Nigeria, has developed a cost-effective, commercial air ambulance solution that allows patients to be transported by air for less than the price of a ground ambulance. This cost pales in comparison to the cost of developing multiple hospitals which would be financially impossible to staff/equip and run on their current budget.

Brown, in a statement said the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) budget stands more than $100 billion per year, adding that it is stressed covering 65 million citizens, while Nigeria’s entire budget, by contrast, is about $12 billion per year, over 60 per cent of which goes to recurrent government expenses such as salaries, travel, training, and perks.

She lamented that there is less than $1 billion for health care in a country with a population of 170 million people.

Her words, “Putting a state of the art hospital in every state of Nigeria would cost about $30bn, more than double our entire budget. Even if we had the money, we lack the resources in terms of doctors, nurses, support staff, maintenance engineers to ensure that these hospitals could function.”

She stated that the only viable alternative is to centralize the country’s healthcare system, with just one or two state of the art centers that are home to Nigeria’s finest and most experienced medical practitioners. These centers, she, reiterated would receive the bulk of healthcare investment, allowing doctors to specialise effectively.

“Majority of sick people do not need to be in hospital, they can be managed effectively through primary care systems in the community. But the sickest patients need to be managed in very specialized hospitals by multi-disciplinary teams, supported complex, expensive equipment. The centralization of the Nigerian healthcare will allow the best use our scarce resources; doctors and money, “she added.

“Air ambulance services increase our ability to get the correct patient to the correct medical facility within the correct time frame. This is a system that is used all over the world (one million air ambulance transfers per year in America).”

Brown further stated that as President Muhammed Buhari leaves on another medical trip to London this week, many Nigerian’s ask why don’t Nigeria have a facility that can provide the level of care that the President is receiving, here in the country. The problem, she said, is obviously not the doctors.

According to her, doctors trained in Nigeria, practice all over the world with little or no re-training required.