Medical Tourism-Issues in Nigeria

Abstract

This study was carried out with the aim of evaluating the effects medical tourism has on Nigeria. This was done focusing on the trends on three major concerns which are: the effect of medical tourism on the health status of Nigerians, the effect of medical tourism on Nigeria’s economy and lastly, why medical tourism by Nigerians despite the development in our medical sector. Data for this study were collected majorly from secondary sources and the Desk review method of data analysis was used. This primarily entails the examination and evaluation of several studies using the Scoping review research design of collecting and collating important information for the research. This allowed for expansion of knowledge on other key areas that were not related to the scope of study, such as social health development and several others. Findings revealed that indeed, medical tourism by Nigerians has had some effects on several sectors of the country, one of which is a reduction in the revenue for sustaining the source country’s (Nigeria) local health sector and as a result, leads to poor performance on the medical officers, as they are short of logistics and facilities and in turn leads to lack of trust in medical practitioners and also high mortality rate. If the millions of Naira spent by some Nigerian government officials and the Nigerian elites on medical tourism abroad, are put into effective infrastructural development and are made to receive medical treatments here in Nigeria, they would indeed be doing the economy and the general image of the nation’s health status /sector a lot of good.

Keywords: Medical tourism, health, scoping review research design

DOI: 10.7176/DCS/10-8-05

Publication date:August 31^st 2020