A multi-billion-dollar healthcare system in the United States, Montefiore Health System, has expressed readiness to help find a lasting solution to Nigeria’s healthcare problem.
President of Montefiore, Prof. Phillip Ozuah, stated this when the Consul General of Nigeria in New York, Mr Benayaogha Okoyen, visited the hospital to have a firsthand assessment of the facilities.
Montefiore is a premier academic medical centre and the University Hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States in Cardiology and Heart Surgery, Diabetes and Endocrinology, and Neurology and Neurosurgery
Ozuah, a Nigerian professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health at Einstein, presides over more than 8,000 doctors and reportedly entered medical school at age 14 in Nigeria’s premier University of Ibadan.
The Nigerian, who is in the top 25 minority executives in healthcare in the United States, said he was keen on using his expertise and connection to collaborate with the Nigerian government and give back to his homeland.
Ozuah said he was passionate about Nigeria healthcare system and was looking for enabling environment to make a lasting impact
According to him, he would like to know what area he could contribute to the Nigerian healthcare system either through partnering with existing hospitals or building new ones.
He said Montefiore had specialists in all fields of transplant, including brain, adding Montefiore was ready to partner with Nigerian teaching hospitals so it could send teams of doctors to the country.
Ozuah said sending a delegation of medical doctors from Montefiore to regularly visit Nigeria would have a huge impact on the country’s health sector.
He said Montefiore had been doing a lot of giving back to many countries all over the world but regretted that every of his efforts to replicate same in Nigeria had been met with so many bottlenecks.
He also expressed concerns about the security of the medical experts with the insecurity problems in parts of the country.
The Montefiore president explained that there was no medical condition that the hospital did not have expertise adding, Montefiore received more than eight million patients annually.
Earlier, the Nigerian Consul General had said that the delegation was at Montefiore to see what areas it could partner with Nigeria to help revamp the country’s healthcare system.
Okoyen assured the Montefiore officials that the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari had improved the ease of doing business adding, bottlenecks were being dismantled.
He acknowledged Ozuah’s passion, hard work, determination and achievements to have attained such an enviable position as a minority immigrant in the United States.
The Nigerian envoy said the passion demonstrated by the Montefiore president was a demonstration of resilience, which was attributable to determined Nigerians anywhere in the world.
He stressed that the Consulate and the Nigerian Government were proud of Ozuah for being a good ambassador of the country.
Okoyen welcomed Ozuah’s determination to visit Nigeria and underlined the health challenges in the country, saying his intervention would help stem the unfortunate trend of medical tourism.
The Nigerian envoy stressed the need to replicate the Montefiore health system in the home country and expressed delight at facilitating the required support to ensure the success of such brilliant initiative.
“The Nigerian Government and the people will be delighted to provide the enabling environment to organisations that promote the safety, wellbeing and health of the Nigerian citizens.
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