The African Export-Import Bank has revealed that Nigeria loses an estimated $1.1bn annually to medical tourism, a trend it described as a significant drain on the country’s foreign exchange and a major impediment to the development of its healthcare sector.

This disclosure was made by the Bank’s Export Development Managing Director, Mrs Oluranti Doherty, during the 32nd Afreximbank Annual Meetings held in Abuja on Thursday.

She said the continued reliance on foreign medical care was not only stalling investment in local health infrastructure but also affecting the broader economy. “We had our member countries losing a lot of foreign exchange to medical tourism,” she said.

“We just talked about Nigeria, where our medical tourism annually is about $1.1bn. The entire continent is about $7bn just because we can’t help ourselves when we come up with chronic diseases. That’s money that’s going to other economies, building their institutions.”

According to her, the capital flight from Nigeria and other African countries towards medical expenses abroad represents missed opportunities to invest in critical sectors at home.

She also highlighted the ongoing loss of skilled healthcare workers to foreign countries, further compounding the challenges facing the local medical industry.

“Another thing we noted was a great way we were losing a lot of our good talents,” she said. “The best of talents in the health sector were going out of the continent, working in places such as India, Asia, the Middle East, America, and that often was an issue.”

Doherty said Afreximbank responded to the trend by launching its Health and Medical Tourism Programme in 2012, recognising early the link between healthcare and economic development.

She cited the Africa Medical Center of Excellence in Abuja as a flagship intervention under the programme. “Afreximbank was innovative. I call us the innovative financier, the innovative investors. We recognised this part since 2012, and we set about doing something about it,” she said.

The AMCE is a 170-bed facility equipped with state-of-the-art medical technology, including an 18 MeV cyclotron, a three-Tesla MRI, and a 20-bed intensive care unit. The Bank has committed over $450m to the project.

“Afreximbank had to go where no one has gone before; Afreximbank’s leaders adhered to the dreamers,” she said. “The AMCE aims to provide healthcare services comparable to global standards, not just African standards. I’m talking about global standards. I’m talking about Africans coming up with solutions to challenges.”

She stressed the need for Nigeria and other African countries to rebuild trust in domestic healthcare systems and called for policies that ensure quality care is accessible locally to reverse the tide of medical tourism.