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. Olufunke Akanle, called for the establishment of a community-based rehabilitation centre for People with Disabilities (PwDs).

“PwDs still go for checkups at far away tertiary centres instead of the primary healthcare centres. This should not be; hence we are advocating the need for such rehabilitation centre at the rural areas close to their communities,” she said.

While she said such PwDs rehabilitation centre would help reintegrate them into the society, Akanle noted urged that such step should be incorporated into the PHCs for easy accessibility.