…A $300 million facility opens on Thursday to create more than 5,000 jobs
Afreximbank's Abuja's $300 million African Medical Centre (AMCE) is scheduled to be officially launched on Thursday, with the goal of plugging Nigeria's annual foreign exchange losses of over $2 billion into medical tourism and related foreign exchange outflows.
The Ministry of Health and Human Services has invested Nigeria's losses in health tourism for over $2 billion a year.
The facility is Africa's first outstanding medical centre and works with King's College in London. Nigeria was selected in 2016 to host pilot AMCE following a competitive bidding process involving Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania.
Speaking on the facility's media tour on Tuesday, Oluranti Doherty, managing director of export development at Afflexibank, said the Abuja Centre was the first in a series of regional centres designed to curb outbound medical travel and improve Africa's ability to treat non-communicable diseases.
According to her, AMCE “represents a bold statement that speaks of what is possible when Africa takes ownership of its future and economic development.
“For us, healthcare is considered continental security. From 2014 to 2015, one of the key factors that leads to outbound medical tourism from the continent and we can establish was the outflow that lost its medical tourism.”
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She spoke about how banks' research on outbound health tourism, particularly in India, Europe and the United States, highlighted the urgent need for high-quality regional health infrastructure.
“We eliminate the need for expensive international travel and related costs, such as accommodations when people leave the country to seek medical care,” she noted.
Doherty highlighted the role of the centre in draining and supporting medical brains for African clinicians, noting that the Abuja facility is already recruiting Nigerian medical professionals from the diaspora.
“We are poised to begin tackling longstanding challenges in medical tourism, limited access to care, and draining water from skilled healthcare professionals from our country head on,” she said.
She also ensured that banks would work with their partners to implement a mechanism to confirm the fact that no one is left in access to care.
AMCE CEO Brian Dieber detailed the technical capabilities of the centre, including the continent's most advanced clinical laboratory facilities.
“We provide tumor sequencing within 72 hours to facilitate targeted therapy decisions. Highly throughput, clinical chemistry, immunoassay lines, 2,000 samples per hour are possible, with barcoded custody chains from Vein to results,” he said.
He added: “There is an advanced level 2 microbiology suite, a comprehensive bone marrow transplant unit, a negative pressure separation suite, and cryogenic stem cell storage. Finally, there is a critical care command center monitored by a predictive analysis dashboard that flags sepsis or respiratory complexity before vital signs crash.”
Deaver reported that it is already equipped with over 300 clinicians, nurses, technicians and engineers from multiple countries, and is expected to create 1,200 direct and 4,000 indirect jobs. He said that the construction phase alone created nearly 2,000 jobs.
The facility also features cyclotrons, which enhances diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities in Africa. Cyclotrons are advanced medical imaging technology used to diagnose and treat complex diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurological disorders, which are AMCE's specialties.
