A five-year concessionary agreement on the new ultra-modern Cardiac and Renal Centre built by the Lagos State government, to stem medical tourism in the country was, on Monday signed between State officials and Directors of RENESCOR Health LLP.
In signing the concession of the N4.43bn facility to the Private Partners, Health Commissioner Dr Jide Idris explained that the Limited Liability Partnership between government and RENESCOR enjoins the partners to provide efficient services at the facility with supervision from the ministry.
According to him, "over the years the state has had a lot of people who have serious complications from cardiac and renal diseases and has had to set aside a huge chunk of its resources to sponsor the people for various medical problems that could not be treated in the country especially where we do not have expertise.
"So it is a combination of the factors that Government therefore considered the need to build a facility locally and find a way to staff it locally to provide the services for the facility to treat all the people, to reduce the amount of money spent on overseas treatment and then build local capacity.
"And then, government realised that quite a lot of the local human capacity needed are abroad and so we decided if we build the facility with the right equipment and infrastructure, we can use that to attract the specialists abroad back home, where they can perform their expertise and then build local expertise back home.
That is why we decided to partner with RENESCOR after we engaged Messrs Deux Project to build the centre and equip with state of the art equipment which can be used to perform heart and cardiac surgery, cardiac catherisation and renal dialysis, renal surgery and transplant among other services.
Idris said RENESCOR would be responsible for staffing the facility and running it using Nigerian experts who have been shortlisted to return from overseas and assist in making sure Nigerians get the best treatment in the country.
He added however that a 10 per cent indigent allowance has been considered for indigent patients by the concessionaires while the state government will still make use of the facility for its free-health programmes.
The concessionaire has a five year renewable agreement upon satisfaction by government.