‘Why Nigerian physicians do fail’

A multi-million naira radio-diagnostic centre in Abuja, the Medicaid Radio-Diagnostic Centre last month opened its doors to those who need hi-tech medical screenings. Managing Director of the centre, Dr Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu, a Paediatrician Consultant said this was one of the ways of bringing quality medical services close to Nigerians and shoring up standards because lack […]

A multi-million naira radio-diagnostic centre in Abuja, the Medicaid Radio-Diagnostic Centre last month opened its doors to those who need hi-tech medical screenings. Managing Director of the centre, Dr Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu, a Paediatrician Consultant said this was one of the ways of bringing quality medical services close to Nigerians and shoring up standards because lack of laboratory back up has always made Nigerian physicians fail.

You have an exquisite centre in Abuja. What gave birth to it?
My dream had always been to come back to Nigeria [after 11 years of practising Medicine abroad]. When I got back, I started working with the Garki Hospital [Abuja]. I set up the Paediatric unit in the new Garki Hospital under the Public Private Partnership.
And it was a challenge for all of us. We had a lot of issues with diagnoses. Both laboratory and radiological back up were bad. We used to get results that I was not happy with. The standard was not near what I had in my training at all!
So this dream started when I returned to Nigeria. I saw the dire lack of services and equipment. Even the little that we had, the standard at which they were run, I was not happy with them at all. That was when I started working on putting something on ground to help the medical personnel.
Nigeria has very good crop of medical personnel: doctors, nurses, technicians and so on but the laboratory back-up fails us a lot. When Nigerians go abroad they excel because they get laboratory back-up. Here we do guess work.
Where did you get the money to set up this centre and how much was it?
This business is 100 per cent private! We took no loan and asked nobody to invest—it is a family investment. My husband and myself made this. I can’t give you exact figure. I can give you how much we spent—N120 million on our machines.
However, you are going to consider the building, the time that we put into it, the delays we had and so forth—they are unquantifiable!
Where did you buy your equipment?
We bought them from GE brand new. I don’t think we will dispute that they are the leading manufacturers of these equipment in the world. They are committed to having a base in Nigeria. There are other equipment manufacturers that have strong bases in Nigeria—Phillips, Toshiba, they are in the National Hospital, Abuja. We can see what happened!
GE equipment do not require much maintenance. In addition, the company trains people. You saw a lady from Britain down stairs, she is training our staff. She is also training a Nigerian radiographer to work locally. So we don’t have to fly them all the times here to fix things.
How old is this your company?
Medicaid has existed for about 10 years but Medical Radiology has been incorporated in it a year ago. But actually we kicked off screening patients a month ago.
How many patients have you screened so far?
Over 1,000 patients have so far been screened in the centre.
What are the cases you have diagnosed?
We do a lot of CT scan. This is a diagnostic centre which means that patients must get reports from doctors or we have an in-house doctor that can guide you. We always want patients to be examined by specialised and efficient doctors first.
We have various equipment: we have ultrasound machine. Our ultrasound machine is four dimension. We have a CT scanner.
What specific cases you have discovered in your diagnoses?
We have picked brain masses from the CT scan. We have a lot of breast lumps, chest infections and cervical cancer. A lot of pregnant women equally come to check their babies. But management is particularly interested in making prices affordable.
Do you know of similar centres in the country?
Without being immodest, the standard we have, you need to see it, you will appreciate it.
Any challenges so far?
Plenty! [laughs]. Obviously, the financial investment is a lot in terms of getting the equipment ready, we had a delay of six months trying to get the power right. It cost us six months and N20 million just to get the power [electricity] right mainly because we are in Nigeria.
The company that made these equipment gives a list of requirements you must meet. If I were doing this in New York, I would not have spent half of the money I spent. But because I am in Nigeria and it is known that the power situation is unstable, you are given all sorts of requirements. If you don’t meet them, you void your warranty—if you don’t meet them, your equipment will go back! We had to do this and that.
We have a transformer, we have a 160KV UPS for one hour—it has to be that way. And then of course, a standby generator. Power has been a major challenge for us.
The equipment were here but for six months we could not install them because GE came for an inspection and said no, you have to do this, you have to do that.
What should Nigerians expect from Medicaid then?
Our dream is to become a regional centre. We want to be able to take care of people from Abuja and its environs. And we hope we will be able to replicate this in various zones of the country. We cannot do it in every state but we can do it in zones.
The building is not massive but we have been able to achieve this you can do a lot with the right planning. We hope that within a few years, we will be able to take this across the country. We will start in Northern Nigeria and then get it across [to the South].
In Abuja, we want to encourage the initiatives we have seen by government—you know the health screening—the Federal Ministry of Health is greatly focusing on cancer screening—encouraging both women and men to do health screening, look for cancers, cancer of the breast, cancer of the cervix, cancer of the prostrate, things that will enhance our own wellbeing as Nigerians. If we can get every women in this environment to have her mammogram and her cervical test once every year, it will be a big achievement.