Nigerian gangs rake in £5,000 a mother to have babies on NHS
AFRICAN gangs are making up to £5,000 profit for every health tourist they smuggle into UK hospitals.
A Daily Express investigation found fixers in Nigeria are helping pregnant women with “travel packages” of flights, flats near UK hospitals, bogus documents and tips on how to avoid paying for treatment.
St George’s Hospital in south London
EXCLUSIVE
last year warned it had been preyed on by the fixers, with 900 health tourists in just a year going there to give birth.
Nigerian families are paying up to £10,000 for the deals which often include another person’s NHS number or a fake British passport.
Unpaid bills from health tourists are soaring despite a proposed Government clampdown, with one Manchester hospital owed more than £500,000 from one case.
The University of Central Manchester NHS Trust has been saddled with a debt of £532,498 this year – the highest recorded.
Hospital bosses refused to reveal more details about the case citing “patient confidentiality”.
St Bartholemew’s hospital (Barts) in central London is chasing a £349,131 bill from one patient while Guy’s and St Thomas’s, also in central London, has been left with an unpaid bill of £317,898 this year.
Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals in east London are chasing parents of one-year-old twins who racked up a £157,378 debt.
The Government wants to recoup £500million a year by introducing new measures today to stop the scandal of health tourism.
Leading cancer specialist Dr Meirion Thomas estimates the true cost of ineligible foreign patients using the NHS to be £2billion a year.
In one recent case Blessing Olamide fell pregnant in Nigeria earlier this year and her father decided to send her to Britain to get treatment as her sister had suffered complications in two pregnancies.
A fixer offered a space in a flat near Barts and tips on how to answer queOVERSEAS ries from NHS managers as well as the fake documents for £8,000. The fixer also promised a fake electricity bill with a London address as well as a forged British driving licence.
Mrs Olamide, a 21-year-old student living in Lagos, said: “They told us the documents were enough to get us free treatment. He also offered us a woman to help me answer any difficult questions as she knew what to say.”
But the family backed out when her father’s driver recognised the fixer’s boss as a member of the feared Black Axe mafia cult. She later suffered a miscarriage and lost her baby.