Nigerians seek to mirror local cardiovascular centre
Published:Wednesday | December 30, 2020 | 12:17 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
The recent visit of Nigeria’s Foreign Minister Geoffery Onyeama on the inaugural direct flight operated by Air Peace from Lagos was timed to commemorate 50 years of excellent bilateral relations between both countries. One of the scheduled stops on his itinerary was at the Heart Institute of the Caribbean (HIC) and HIC Heart Hospital in Kingston which has a well-earned reputation as an international centre of excellence in cardiovascular care.
During the tour, the diplomat and his entourage were able to catch up with their countryman Professor Ernest Madu, who co-founded the facility, as well as get some insight into its world-class operations, with a view to replicating this model of private cardiovascular healthcare in Nigeria.
Afterwards, the incoming CEO of HIC, Dr Dainia Baugh, told The Gleaner that the visit was an important agenda item for the high-level Nigerian team.
“They made a special effort to include us in their itinerary to see what we are doing here and how they can duplicate it in a bigger way,” she said. “The news has travelled far about what we are doing here and as they even look at what is happening with the United States – Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Yale. It has pointed them to us as an example of what is happening in a developing economy in delivering First-World care.”
New motivation
The visit will serve as a shot in the arm for the HIC team and give them new motivation to keep going.
Baugh admitted that Jamaica is not necessarily the easiest place to do business or to change paradigms, since people are set in their ways and are very often opposed to change.
“The first thing you are met with is a lot of suspicion, and then that suspicion can often turn to hostility ... ,” she said.
“If the chairman of medicine at Johns Hopkins University says, ‘Wow, this is good’, if he puts his money where his mouth is and says to other people, ‘You should look at that place’, then it reinforces to us that what we are doing is worthy of emulation and for those of us who have practised in the wider world, we know it,” said Baugh.