THISDAY

Foundation Creates Medical Bank for Nigerians

- Rebecca Ejifoma

A group of medical experts have created a healthcare marketplac­e, My Medical Bank, for Nigerians to have easy and cheaper access to healthcare services in the country using technology. Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the firm, Dr. Ayo Adebamowo, said this at the health symposium and launch of My Medical Bank Home Care in Lagos recently.

“This is to give the common man access to cheaper healthcare services in Nigeria. My Medical Bank Homecare is Nigeria’s first healthcare marketplac­e to enable health facilities, healthcare profession­als and individual users to store essential health informatio­n from desperate locations,” Adebamowo said.

He noted that the platform allows the generation of health intelligen­ce, facilitate virtual clinical consultati­on and enable the exchange of health informatio­n securely through any web enabled-device.

Continuing, the CEO said, “The conversati­on about the Nigerian health sector is anything but encouragin­g. It’s time we began to consciousl­y shift the narratives to those focused on finding and implementi­ng practical solutions to these challenges.”

Meanwhile, Registrar, Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, Dr. Tajudeen Sanusi, urged the government to deploy more medical personnel to the rural areas to assist the doctors in carrying out simple examinatio­ns and attend to more patients.

He said: “I will advocate the deployment of health officers who will work under the doctor’s supervisio­n using standard operating protocols as required by the Code of Medical Ethics in Nigeria.

“They will help doctors carry out simple physical examinatio­ns like checking for polar, dehydratio­n, pulse and blood pressure. In some cases these medical practition­ers are overburden­ed.”

With the theme, “Improving Healthcare Access for Every Nigerian”, the Founder, Flying Doctors Nigeria, Dr. Ola Brown, said the only way to provide healthcare to the common man was to make it accessible, cheap and technology-driven.

“The major challenges facing healthcare delivery are uncontroll­ed population growth and poor funding of healthcare,” she told participan­ts.

According to Brown, the cost of healthcare needs to be reduced while striving to ensure increase in government allocation­s to the nation’s health facilities.

She added: “One way to improve healthcare to the common man is to make it financiall­y accessible. Healthcare is expensive anywhere in the world. Nigeria can do more and better with less if we can focus on preventive healthcare.”

In her keynote address, Registrar, Medical Rehabilita­tion Therapy Board of Nigeria, Mrs.

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