Director of medical imaging Prof Guang-Zhong Yang with a mechanical snake that can perform operations. Photo/FILE REUTERS
A few weeks ago I attended an event sponsored by an international medical supplier. The event was part of a marketing tour by the officials in Kenya.
The highlight of the day was Kenya’s lack of cutting edge medical equipment and procedures. Robotic surgery and liver transplants are some of the procedures that are yet to be done locally.
The local representative made an important observation; 10 years ago mobile phones cost about Sh150,000 a piece, an amount that was beyond the reach of millions. Fast forward to today and the explosion of mobile phone use and opportunities that have arisen are there for everyone to see.
Despite the high investments that will be required in hospitals to acquire state of the art health care technologies, these will open doors to untapped medical tourism.
Many Kenyans are travelling abroad because of lack of high-tech facilities and some perceive hospitals in countries like USA and South Africa as a sure bet to receiving quality healthcare. This has seen countries like India turn into top medical tourism destinations.
For the financially endowed, USA and Germany has become the destination of choice where “softer chemotherapy” is used and marketed to cancer patients.
In the spa village of Bad Salzhausen in Germany, for instance, a combination of medical, spiritual care and even ethno botanical pharmacology are incorporated with cutting edge science to offer more tolerable doses and regimens of treatment for cancer.
The increase in number of Kenyan medical travellers to countries like India has opened an investment window for entrepreneurs.
Previously, patients had to rely on their own research or recommendations to choose a hospital. However, some faced challenges as they didn’t have a contact person to deal with before travelling for medical care.
To address this, services providers like Simon Karo are now handling patient logistics bookings and medical billing issues mostly for those travelling to India.
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He says the country should have a similar programme where organisations link patients from African countries to Kenyan hospitals to boost medical tourism.
A second challenge was the financial costs. Some providers are now partnering with insurance and banks to provide financing options which may be hard to get as an individual.
As entrepreneurs take advantage of the increase in number of patients travelling abroad, it is time investors injected more cash in upgrading hospitals to woo foreign clients.
Kenya has some of the best private hospitals in East and Central Africa. With growth in technology, there is no reason why it cannot be a hub for specialised medicare in the region.
source: http://www.BusinessDailyAfrica.com / Business Daily / Home / by Edward Omete / Tuesday, February 19th, 2013
