Nigeria’s medical device market will record double-digit growth in local currency and will grow at a 2017-2022 CAGR of 9 percent to reach $184.4 million by 2022, says latest report by Fitch Solutions.
Medical devices such as diagnostic imaging, patient’s aids and orthopaedics are related articles designed by the manufacturer for diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, treatment or alleviation of disease burden.
To take advantage of the growing interest, although the market is predicted to benefit from an improved outlook for the economy and remains almost entirely reliant on imports, chronic underfunding and the chaotic management of public healthcare services, exacerbated by the insurgency in the northeast region, will continue to restrict market growth in the medium term.
Therefore, over the next three years, 70 percent of healthcare organisations worldwide are expected to invest in consumer-facing mobile applications, wearables, remote health monitoring, and virtual care, which will create more demand for huge records and analytics capabilities to support population health management initiatives.
However, BusinessDay’s findings show that the country now sees more importations of cancer nuclear machines, radiotherapy machines, CT scans, dialysis machines. On the basis of end user, market is segmented into hospitals, clinics, pharmacies, and academic research institutes.
“The Nigerian medical device market will witness a strong growth rate in the medium to long-term future driven by improved economic conditions and the introduction of a foray of new companies with technological advancements,” Research and Markets also predicts.
Nigeria is expected to grow more in the share medical device market. This is owing to rising intravenous usage of technology in the state and the rising cost of healthcare, which stimulated the development of innovative connected products.
Also, demand for early detection and non-invasive therapies high awareness among people regarding the medical uses of medical technology is expected to drive the market growth in the state.
“Nigeria is about 20 percent of the entire Africa population, so it is a big market. We must work with the whole world and this why we are seeing these innovations of new technology of medical device by private individuals and starts up,” said Francis Faduyile, the president Nigerian Medical Association (NMA).
However, China is the leading supplier of medical devices to Nigeria, with a 47 percent share of the import total in 2016. China was the main supplier of consumables, patient aids, dental products and other medical devices with a particularly dominant position in bandages &and dressings, syringes, needles and catheters and therapeutic appliances.
According to the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission, a myriad of investment opportunities exist across the healthcare value chain in Nigeria and investors interested in taking advantage of these opportunities will benefit from taking a long-term view of the market and keeping in consideration the dynamics of healthcare investment in developing nations.
“Nigeria government should starts looking at regulations that make things easier especially for the field of medicine where it is so unique that is very hard to get these products any other way than to bring it outside the country for now,” Hammed Ninalowo, a vascular and interventional radiologist, said.
Ninalowo said: “Let the Government put regulations in place to give us special privileges to bring these products, get these manufacturers, and make the regulations more lenient for these manufacturers to come into the country to sell us this product so we can take care of our own people because people are dying every day from just incompetence regulators who are unwilling to make things easier for us.”
Meanwhile, the report from the Healthcare Market by Fitch Solutions also re-evaluated that healthcare expenditure in Nigeria is predicted to reach NGN 5,762.061 billion by 2021 growing at a CAGR of 8.35%, this is up from an estimated NGN 5,318.061 billion in 2020.
“By 2021, healthcare spending is estimated to make up 2.94% of the country’s GDP. While the government is expected to spend N1,477.77 billion by 2021, the private sector will spend N4,284.469 billion in the same period. This is up from N1,190.71 billion and N3,709.120 billion, respectively, in 2019,” it stated.
Nigeria is currently the most populated country in Africa with an estimated population of over 200 million people, statistics from the Nigerian Economic Recovery & Growth Plan 2017-2020, at 52 years, the average life expectancy in Nigeria is lower than that of its peer African countries, Ghana (61 years) and South Africa (57 years).
In Nigeria, the prevalence of infectious diseases remains high. The country ranks poorly on the incidence of tuberculosis (128 out of 138 countries) and the prevalence of HIV (123 out of 138 countries). On under-five child mortality, there are 89 deaths per 1,000 live births, a level far above the target of 64 deaths per 1,000 live births set in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The Federal Government’s health policy under the Economic Recovery & Growth Plan 2017-2020 aims to improve the availability, accessibility, affordability and quality of health services by increasing access to primary health care services, expanding health coverage and improving the quality of the services provided.
“A weak currency not only makes financial system fragile, it precipitates instability and undermines growth and the government lack enough money to stimulate the economy,” said Ayo Teriba, CEO, Economic Associates.
“Nigeria must join the liquidity race and regain its place among peers, the main weakness over the years is that low levels of foreign reserves leave the system uninsured against external financial shocks, weakens the Naira exchange rate, and makes assets denominated in Naira poor stores of value and wealth .Nigeria needs to wake up,” economist said.
ANTHONIA OBOKOH
