Following increasing demand for health services, including diagnostic treatment and care, which presents a growing and untapped opportunity in Nigeria’s health sector, Diamond Bank plc has unveiled a new product tagged ‘Diamond MediLoan Quality Care.
Designed to provide loan facilities for improved healthcare delivery in the country, the product will afford operators of hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, laboratories, diagnostic centres and other medical establishments the opportunity to access loan facility from the bank to acquire medical equipment, fixed assets, undertake renovation and expansion of existing facilities in order to deliver efficient as well as qualitative service to their clients.
Speaking at the launch, Uzoma Dozie, deputy managing director, Diamond Bank plc, noted that the bank took keen interest in the health sector due to the strategic importance of good health in the overall wellbeing of man.
“For any nation to develop, three things are very critical and important: education, health and food. Citizens, particularly the workforce, must be educated, healthy and well-fed. If the workforce lacks any of the three, they can’t be competitive and if they are not, the country can’t develop,” Dozie said.
“That’s the reason we are addressing the problem of financing in the health sector. Through this newly launched product, health practitioners would have access to finance to purchase necessary equipment so they could provide affordable and qualitative services,” he said.
Dozie stated that that Nigeria loses millions of dollars annually to countries like United States of America, Britain, Germany, India, etc with better healthcare facilities through medical tourism, a situation which the new loan facility aims to address in the country.
“Health statistics has revealed that Nigeria has estimated 545 maternal deaths per 100,000 births and over 18,000 Nigerians travelled to India in 2013 for medical purposes and spent over N41.6 billion naira. When hospitals in Nigeria have the necessary medical equipment, patients won’t need to travel abroad to seek medical treatment, and in the process lose a lot of money. This new facility will help in this regard and make the services affordable,” Dozie said.
Speaking on behalf of the partnering organisation, Safe Care, a medical advisory and standards organisation, Uzodinma Osisiogu said the organisation would serve as the quality control partner for the programme, adding that Safe Care would ensure both technical and business competence of applicants before recommending them for the loan.
“The application process would be thorough so that only competent ones would access the loan. The technical aspect is vital as well as the financials. We will look at their record keeping processes also. After securing the loan, we would ensure compliance with terms and insist in delivering the promised quality of service because that is the basis of the loan. Providing quality healthcare is no longer an option; it is the way to go. It confers a competitive advantage on the provider,” he added.
This facility, which is available in Lagos currently, will be extended to other cities, namely, Ibadan, Enugu, Awka, Owerri and Umuahia soon.
The product has four different tiers of financing, ranging from N200,000 to N56 million.
This development comes as a recent analysis by the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in its report titled ‘Health in Africa Initiative: Private Health Market Studies in Nigeria’ found a total financing need for the 151 sample Primary Healthcare (PHC) facilities to be $97.5 million. Based on this, the estimated bankable need at the national level is about $3 billion.
The report, however, advised that priority should be on priorities
support to the other sub-sectors to access financing, i.e., hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmacies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs), and medical equipment suppliers.
Alexander Chiejina