The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a Senior Loan in Naira (equivalent to $20 million) to Santa Clara Medical Limited, to finance the development of a hospital and referral clinics in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!In a statement, the Bank noted that by supporting investment in healthcare infrastructure, it will help the Nigerian government develop human capital through improved service delivery in the healthcare system.
AfDB’s Director of Industrialization and Trade Development, Dr Abdu Mukhtar, said: “This situation currently forces over 30,000 Nigerians to spend over USD 1 billion on medical tourism for specialty treatments overseas.
Completing this project would allow the country’s healthcare sector to benefit from some of these resources.” He also added: “This is an important development. In spite of recent improvements, Nigeria’s health infrastructure remains rudimentary and insufficient to cater to the country’s growing population”.
According to the AfDB, the hospital and referral clinics will be situated in different locations in Lagos and will upon completion in 2020, provide a full spectrum of high quality general and specialist healthcare services at competitive prices. It further stated that the project is expected to have positive economic and social benefits for the city of Lagos and will create around 250 temporary jobs during the construction period and 600 jobs over its operation phase.
Besides creating jobs, the project will also significantly improve private healthcare services by offering quality general medical services in addition to specialty services such as orthopedic, nephrology, urology, cardiology and neuro surgery that are largely unavailable in the country.
The Santa Clara Medical fa-cility is being promoted by AXA Mansard, a member of the AXA Group, Africa Capital Alliance, IFC and Healthshare Health Solutions, the hospital management company of the project.
The AfDB explained that the investment is consistent with its Private Sector Development Strategy which aims to, among others, improve Africa’s investment and business climate, especially in the healthcare sector that is currently underserved by the private sector in addition to increasing access to social and economic infrastructure on the continent.
Comments are closed.