Vedic Lifecare Hospital push for improved capacity in specialised medicine

Over the years, tens of thousands in Nigeria troop to foreign hospitals in Europe, Asia, America and other parts of the world every year for medical care otherwise known as medical tourism. Whilst those that travel abroad for medicare seek for high quality health care in orthopaedics (bone and skeletal), building the capacity of doctors in Nigeria on a periodic basis have resonated amongst experts in the sub-speciality.

With few private and public orthopaedic hospitals making some progress in the standards of Orthopaedic care in Nigeria, the need for regular human capital development for medical personnel including physicians is germane. This is coming as a recent comment by Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) reveal that Nigerians spend $1billion annually on medical tourism on a range of care needs- oncology, orthopaedics, nephrology and cardiology.

At a recent Continuing Development Professional Seminar titled Recognising Musculoskeletal Red Flags in Family Practice” organised by Vedic Lifecare Hospital in collaboration with Manipal Hospital, Bangalore, Hemant Kalyan, Head of Department for Orthopaedics department at Manipal Hospitals noted that the purpose of the seminar was to strengthen the awareness and practice of orthopaedics in Nigeria.

Amongst other things, the seminar sought to sensitize doctors, especially, the family practice to know which patient needs specialist treatment.

Kalyan revealed that there are various common knee conditions where the family practitioner who is often the first point of contact for a patient, needs to be alert to Identify red flags-referring the patient to a specialist for the correct treatment and timely prevention of complications.

Shedding more insights on his visit, Kalyan continued: “We have a large volume of patients we see every year, more than 32, 000 out patients and more than 2,900 surgeries a year performed in our department in India. There are plans by the hospital (Vedic Lifecare Hospital to establish a state-of-the-art hospital in Nigeria to manage and treat bone related problems.

“During this four days visit, we plan to see at least 100 people.  We are going to be conducting a Continuing Medical Examination, CME, programme, for about 70 Nigerian doctors, who are mainly Family Practitioners and Specialists.

Saurav Kumar, Centre Head of Vedic Life Care Hospital, disclosed that the hospital is committed towards the continuous periodic seminars on medical specialties which will help develop the clinical practice in Nigeria.

“We have been offering short term fellowships of six months to one year at the moment in two fields, one in arthroscopic surgeries which is the chemo surgery for the knee and shoulder mainly and other joints as well and the second is joint replacement surgery mainly on the hip and knee,” Kumar added.