The Senate on Tuesday said that the expenditure of over $1 billion (about N305.250 billion) annually for medical treatment abroad was unacceptable.
 
Chairman, Senate Committee on Health, Senator Lanre Tejuosho, who stated this at a press conference in Abuja said that the Senate was working assiduously to turn the country’s health sector around for the benefit of Nigerian.
 
The Ogun Central lawmaker noted that as at mid-October 2016, the Minister of State for Health, Dr. Osagie Ehanire informed his committee that the country was spending over US$1 billion annually on medical treatment abroad.
 
He said that the minister agreed that such external expenditure was not good for the country’s economy.
 
He noted that at an exchange rate of N305.25 (CBN rates for 2nd February 2017), the local equivalent of the expenditure is N305.250 billion.
 
Senator Tejuosho lamented what he described as the appalling state of the  country’s health sector, including “gross inadequate health budget, poor utilisation of health capital budget and high out-of-pocket health expenditure in Nigeria [known to be the highest in the world], are unacceptable.”
 
 
According to him, “equally intolerable is the several billions of US Dollars we spend on medical tourism.”
 
Read more at http://thenationonlineng.net/senate-decries-n305b-expenditure-on-medical...