Prof. Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman, Board of Directors, African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), has said that his ill-health in 2013 and the medical attention he received triggered his support for the construction of African Medical Centre of Excellence (AMCE).<\/p>\n\n\n
Oramah said this on Tuesday, in Abuja at the groundbreaking of a 500-bedding AMCE expected to carter for the health needs of Nigerians and other Africans.<\/p>\n\n\n
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that President Muhammadu Buhari, represented by the Minister of Health, Prof. Osagie Ehanire, performed the groundbreaking of the centre with the hope that it would discourage medical tourism abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n
The AMCE has a special partnership between Kings College in London and the Christie Cancer Hospital in Manchester.<\/p>\n\n\n
Oramah noted that he was moved by the quality of medical care and treatment he received for nine months while on admission at the Kings College Hospital, and as such the need to replicate such hospital in Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cThe launching today has strong links to difficult personal experience of mine; in 2013 an inexplicable coincidence of events took place and a number of staff and family members fell seriously ill; I was one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cI was so ill that I nearly died. I spent nine months getting treated.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cI was evacuated to Kings College Hospital in London, where I come under the care of Ghulam Mufti, Professor of Hemato-Oncology and his colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cI had the hope of survival because of the competent doctors and healthcare workers around.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cAs far as excellent facilities and Kings College was there, there was no doubt that I survived, and I stand before you today because I was privileged,\u201d Oramah.<\/p>\n\n\n
He assured that the Afreximbank team would ensure that the centre which would run in collaboration with the Kings College Hospital would be a place of pride as far as quality healthcare was concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n
Oramah noted that Africa deserved better healthcare from what was obtainable presently.<\/p>\n\n\n
Minister of Health, Prof. Osagie Ehanire said that efforts would be made to ensure some Nigerian medical experts abroad returned home to take charge of the centre.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cWe will repatriate Nigerians from the diaspora who have the knowledge and skill, to come here and make it available to Nigerians.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cThey will pass the knowledge and skill on to others because the centre will also be a training institution and a research institution.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cWe will have first value for this investment which is entirely non-government expenditure except for the land which government has provided,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n
Earlier, Prof. Ghulam Mufti, who is also the Clinical and Medical Adviser on the AMCE project, said the hospital would be completed in two phases.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cThe phase one will comprise of the 170 in-patient beds that will start taking patients in two years from now and the phase two will follow soon.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cThe first phase will provide comprehensive cardiovascular care centre; this centre will provide state of the art cardio diagnostics, imaging technologies together with expertise for complex and other vascular therapeutics.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cSecondly, the comprehensive cancer centre will cover all the modern need including Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan, Computed Tomography (CT) scanning and other relevant important equipment for the modern management of cancer.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cThe treatment will be all inclusive such that the need to go outside the country for any treatment, we hope, will be totally eliminated,\u201d Mufti said.<\/p>\n\n\n
The Professor of Hemato-Oncology also said that the AMCE would also serve as a place for bone marrow transplant and a hospital for the treatment of blood diseases like leukemia and sickle cell.<\/p>\n\n\n
According to him, the ambition and plan is to create a network of medical centres of medical excellence throughout Africa and link them through advanced digital technology.<\/p>\n\n\n
He added: \u201cthrough Kings College commercial services, we are delighted to have signed a long term collaborator agreement to deliver our world class services to the population of Nigeria and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cThe centre will be an exampler for laboratory diagnosis. It will serve as a hub for molecular diagnosis that will not only serve the local needs but the country\u2019s need as well as needs in the sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cAs Prof. Oramah has mentioned, there will be comprehensive clinical trials, training and education centre within the AMEC.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cWe will create an infrastructure to drive clinical trials infrastructure, bio-banking and to attract pharmaceuticals and bio-technology companies to work with the centre to introduce new drugs.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u201cThe companies will also initiate research with other global institutions both in Europe and in U.S. and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
FCT Minister, Mohammed Bello assured that all the roads linking the AMCE would be completed within two years before the accomplishment of the project.<\/p>\n\n\n
\u25aa\ufe0e By NAN<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Prof. Benedict Oramah, President and Chairman, Board of Directors, African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), has said that his ill-health in 2013 and the medical attention he received triggered his support for the construction of African Medical Centre of Excellence (AMCE). Oramah said this on Tuesday, in Abuja at the groundbreaking of a 500-bedding AMCE expected to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37339,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5773],"tags":[3630,4306,4307],"class_list":["post-37338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-afrexim","tag-amce","tag-oramah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}