Chief Medical Director, University College Hospital, Ibadan, Professor, Temitope Alonge has said that Nigerian doctors should be blamed for medical tourism because they are the ones spreading bad reports about the health sector.
Alonge who spoke during the commissioning of Tri-State Heart and Cardiovascular Centre at Babcock University insisted that some doctors are also amassing wealth by referring people abroad.
He said “Some unscrupulous Nigerian doctors have abandoned credible ways of amassing wealth and have become the conduit of medical tourism by providing negative reports about the health care service centres in Nigeria in order to justify referring a patient.
“The foreign hospitals have struck deals with the referring Nigerian doctors who ultimately get the full treatment fee on the sixth patient with a particular ailment like congenital heart diseases.”
He urged the federal government to invest in health care. He also blamed the adoption of western lifestyle for the continuous rise of diseases like Diabetes.
He said “Adoption of western life style with gross indiscipline as regards dietary discretion, lack of exercise increasing stress levels are fore runners of diabetes mellitus and hypertension and their accompanying complications.”