The Nigerian healthcare sector is positioned to receive a $200 million boost, as disclosed by the National Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA).
This was disclosed by the Managing Director (MD), NSIA, Uche Orji, at the weekly ministerial briefing convened by the Presidential Media Team at the presidential villa, Abuja.
Explaining the system of fundraising, Orji said that the Authority had partnered with “other investors” that signified interest, adding that appropriate documentation was underway for the acquisition of “third party funds”.
He said, “NSIA, we can sponsor, we can co-develop and we can just invest. We are looking at all three options; the more difficult ones, we will do ourselves and the easier ones we will look at some companies that already have existing infrastructure and work with them.
“Some of these infrastructures are just so archaic and so far behind and it is better to just build them brand new, as we did with the cancer centre in Lagos University Teaching Hospital, we just demolished it and started afresh.
“So these are all things we need to do but we have established the fact that it is important, we will do that and I am certain we will complete something in healthcare this year.
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“We are trying to raise a $200 million fund; not just us, there are other investors that have indicate interest so the documentation for getting the third party funds is ongoing.
“There are three things we have done in healthcare. First of all, the NSIA has a Healthcare Investment Company, through which we initially wanted to tackle all the challenges in the health sector but we realized that if you take it all at once, you are probably not going to succeed.
“So, we decided to do two things, first of all, you showcase an area that is of interest to Nigerians and we took cancer and we went to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and said can we take over your cancer centre and rebuild it? Secondly, we now built two world-class diagnostic and radiology centres in Kano and Umuahia.
“I am happy to report that those centres have been successful. Initially, we hired a management team from South Africa, it didn’t work, we fired them and built our own management team. At the moment all these are working well; the health company, LUTH cancer centre and the diagnostic centres.”
