Femi Akintunde, Group Managing Director, Alpha Mead Group.

Alpha Mead, Access to Healthcare, Modular Healthcare Facility,

To accelerate access to quality healthcare for all Nigerians, Alpha Mead Healthcare Management Services, a subsidiary of the Alpha Mead Group will on Wednesday, June 23, launch a state-of-the-art Modular Healthcare Facility (MHF) at the Gbagada General Hospital, Gbagada, Lagos.

“The MHF is a customised, mobility-enhanced, prefabricated portacabin with detachable modules equipped with state-of-the-art clinical and diagnostic equipment that is designed to take quality healthcare services to the doorstep of all Nigerians”, said Femi Akintunde, Group Managing Director, Alpha Mead Group.

Speaking on Wednesday, June 16 at a media interaction ahead of the launch of the MHF, Akintunde, an Engineer, explained that after a successful pilot of the company’s foray into Healthcare at Gbagada General Hospital, and Lagos University Teaching (LUTH), the need to make quality healthcare accessible to more Nigeria became even more pressing.

“So we went back to the drawing board. We noted that some of the issues slowing down the government and private sector programmes in making healthcare accessible for all are; how long it takes to set up a healthcare facility, inadequate amount of healthcare workers, lack of the required equipment and sometimes; even the terrain or location where these healthcare facilities will be constructed”

“To address these issues, we came up with the Modular Healthcare Facility (MHF). The whole idea of the MHF is to aggressively drive the penetration of healthcare facilities in Nigeria by reducing the construction timeline of a healthcare facility to less than 30 days – saving the time lost to design, construction, equipment installation and commissioning of regular brick and mortar healthcare facilities, which sometimes run into years”.

He noted that to address the issue of inadequate medical practitioners, particularly doctors in the rural areas or crisis zones, the MHF was designed to leverage technology to connect patients with medical doctors anywhere through its telemedicine facilities.

According to him, the MHF provides the right healthcare equipment that meets the minimum standard for each class of the healthcare segment – primary, secondary and tertiary and reduces the dependency of the healthcare facility on public utility by running on efficient and clean utility systems such as solar power, bio-digester sewage system, etc.

In his presentation, Kunle Omidiora, Managing Director, Alpha Mead Healthcare & Management Services (AMHS), the subsidiary of Alpha Mead promoting the MHF said the product is coming to bridge the widening gap in access to quality healthcare in Nigeria.

Omidiora commented: “from whatever lens one chooses to view the challenges with the healthcare sector in Nigeria today; whether financial, personnel, equipment, systems or technologies; the biggest challenge with Nigeria’s healthcare sector is that of access to quality healthcare”.

“This challenge is costing our nation a great deal. For example, a USAID report noted that Nigeria shoulders up to 10% of the global disease burden. The report noted further that this situation is caused by lack of access to quality healthcare facilities and workers, particularly in the rural areas”.

He further noted that the challenge can be further put in context when squared against 2019 data from Nigeria Health Facility Register (NHFR).

“According to the report, Nigeria has 40,345 registered hospitals and clinics to serve the 201 million population. This simply implies that one healthcare facility is responsible for an estimated five million Nigerians”, Omidiora explained.

“The problem is even more compounded with data from WHO report revealing that only a quarter of Nigeria’s primary healthcare facilities have more than 25% of the minimum equipment package. One, therefore, does not need to wonder why Nigeria loses over 1 billion dollars to medical tourism, has one of the world highest infant mortality rates, and why prevalence of medical errors in Nigeria is on the rise”.

He explained that this huge gap is what the MHF intends to bridge; noting that the MHF is equipped with Radiology Information System, Picture Archiving Communication System (RISPACS), Enterprise Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Telehealth infrastructure for real-time reporting of investigation and remote consultation.