Health
Senate Moves to Block Medical Tourism
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Senate has moved to block revenue leakages from medical tourism by coming up with a bill aimed to reduce the number of Nigerians travelling abroad for medical care.
In a bill titled Federal Medical Centres (Establishment) Bill, 2021 sponsored by Mrs Aishatu Ahmed (APC, Adamawa Central), on Thursday, the upper chamber of the parliament moved to effect structures that will stop the trend.
Leading debate on the bill, Mrs Ahmed said the absence of a legal framework for the regulation, development and management of Federal Medical Centers, which were established to render health services, was responsible for hindering the provision of intensive, effective and efficient health care services to the people of Nigeria.
According to the lawmaker, “this has led to a number of challenges in the health sector including but not limited to under-funding, weak facilities and infrastructure, poor motivation of health workers, low budget, weak accountability, conflicts with the political structure of the states and industrial strikes which has led to inadequacies, shortcomings and weaknesses which hinder effective health care delivery services.”
She noted that the passage of the bill will “reduce the number of Nigerians who have to go to other countries for medical care.”
The lawmaker lamented that “an average of 20,000 Nigerians travel to India each year for medical assistance due to the absence of a solid healthcare system at home.”
Senator Ahmed further noted that the piece of legislation would also sufficiently address remuneration of the employees of the Medical Centers which in turn would check the exodus of doctors and nurses to other countries.
“Seventy-seven per cent of black doctors in the US are Nigerians and there is rarely any top medical institution in the US or Europe where you don’t find Nigerians managing at the top level.
“Hardly a year passes without a major national strike by nurses, doctors, or health consultants. The major reasons for these strikes are poor salaries and lack of government investment in the health sector,” she said.
Citing a report of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, Mrs Ahmed stressed that the bill would “improve on the persistent rate of avoidable deaths of all Nigerians.”
“A recent UNICEF report has it that preventable or treatable diseases such as malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles and HIV/AIDS account for more than 70 per cent of the estimated one million under-five deaths in Nigeria,” she said.
She added that with the right data, Nigeria would witness improvements in the health information system, regular and sustainable population and health-facility-based surveys; as well as have a centralized management of the many challenges of the 23 Federal Medical Centers in the country.
Contributing to the debate, Mr Yahaya Oloriegbe (APC, Kwara Central) said Federal Medical Centres were incapacitated as a result of the absence of legal backing establishing them and insufficient funding.
“We have about twenty-three Federal Medical Centres that were established across the country, but without legal backing.
“The consequence of such is that there are, what I will call policy somersault as regards the operations of these centres.
“You see some of the centres that have enough facilities and manpower to even be termed a Teaching Hospital, but because the legal framework did not state the standard, in terms of infrastructures, manpower and services, they remain like that, and it becomes at the whims and caprices of the policymakers in the Federal Ministry of Health.
“The consequences in terms of funding allocation, Federal Medical Centres receive less fund compared to Teaching Hospitals,” the lawmaker said.
On his part, Mr Ibn Na’Allah said the bill was timely as it seeks “to ensure that all institutions of government are governed by law.”
“We cannot continue to operate a democracy where public funds are disbursed to institutions that are not recognized by law. That is not right,” Mr Na’Allah added.
The bill, after scaling second reading, was referred to the Committee on Health by the Senate President, Mr Ahmad Lawan, for further legislative work.
The committee, which is chaired by Mr Oloriegbe, is expected to report back in four weeks.
By Dipo Olowookere
A $10 million capital has been raised by Helical to support expansion across more top-20 pharma programmes and growth of its deployed science engineering team.
The firm will also use the money to build the compounding evidence layer that improves performance across diseases, as its mission is to make every scientist able to test hypotheses at the speed of inference and to turn in-silico discovery into a reliable engine for R&D throughput.
The funding package was from redalpine, Gradient, BoxGroup, Frst and notable angels, including Aidan Gomez (CEO Cohere), Clement Delangue (CEO HuggingFace) and Mario Goetze (pro soccer player).
Helical has a product known as the virtual AI lab for pharma, an application layer that turns biological foundation models into decision-ready, reproducible in-silico discovery workflows.
The platform has two product surfaces — the Virtual Lab for biologists and translational scientists, and the Model Factory for ML engineers and data scientists — built on the same data, the same models, and the same results.
By putting both sides in the same system, Helical closes the gap between computational predictions and biological decision-making, so teams that traditionally worked in silos can collaborate on the same evidence.
Helical was founded in early 2024. It was created by three school friends who took different paths to the same problem.
Rick Schneider built tech at Amazon and later helped the German enterprise Celonis scale in France and Japan. Maxime Allard led data science teams at IBM before pursuing a PhD focused on reinforcement learning and robotics. Mathieu Klop became a cardiologist and genomics researcher.
When bio foundation models emerged, the trio saw the chance to build the missing application layer that would let pharma teams move from model experimentation to reproducible, production discovery.
“The models alone don’t discover drugs. The system does. Pharma teams need a system that turns foundation models into workflows scientists can run, validate, and defend.
“We built Helical to make in-silico science reproducible at pharma scale, so teams can go from hypothesis to decision in days instead of months,” the co-founder of Helical, Mr Rick Schneider, said.
“We are at a unique point in time where biological foundation models and general language reasoning models are converging.
“We backed Helical because we strongly believe they have what it takes to build the pharma AI orchestration platform that will drive this transition from siloed AI models to integrated virtual AI labs,” the General Partner at redalpine, Mr Daniel Graf, stated.
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nigerian Association of Resident Doctors (NARD) has suspended its planned nationwide indefinite strike, granting the federal government a two-week ultimatum to address lingering welfare issues affecting resident doctors across the country.
The decision was taken after an emergency meeting of the association’s National Executive Council on Tuesday, where members reviewed assurances from government representatives and resolved to give dialogue another chance.
NARD said the suspension was informed by “progress made” in negotiations, particularly commitments on the prompt payment of salary arrears, hazard allowances, and steps toward resolving issues surrounding the Medical Residency Training Fund.
The association did not declare a full resolution of the dispute. It noted that the government had shown “renewed willingness” to address the concerns that triggered the strike threat.
The association noted that while these engagements signalled a willingness by the government to resolve the dispute, several critical issues remain outstanding, particularly the delayed payment of promotion arrears, salary arrears, the 2026 Medical Residency Training Fund (MRTF), and the backlog of 19 months’ professional allowance arrears owed to resident doctors.
It also expressed concern over the Federal Government’s decision to halt the implementation of the reviewed PAT, which had earlier triggered widespread dissatisfaction among its members and raised fears of disruption to healthcare services nationwide.
Despite these unresolved issues, NARD said it opted to suspend the strike as a demonstration of goodwill and commitment to ongoing dialogue, while giving the government a two-week window to take concrete, measurable and verifiable steps to meet its demands.
The association insisted on the immediate reversal of the decision affecting the PAT, payment of all outstanding arrears, prompt disbursement of the MRTF, and full settlement of the accumulated professional allowance backlog.
It warned that it would reconvene at the expiration of the ultimatum to assess the level of compliance and determine its next course of action, adding that failure by the government to meet its demands within the stipulated timeframe would result in the resumption of the suspended strike without further notice.
NARD also called on its members nationwide to remain calm, united and resolute, while urging the Federal Government to act swiftly to prevent a potential crisis in the health sector.
The association further appreciated the interventions of the Vice President and other stakeholders, expressing hope that their involvement would lead to the timely resolution of the dispute and help sustain healthcare delivery across the country.
By Modupe Gbadeyanka
To expand affordable healthcare in Kenya, Swedfund has invested about $600,000 into Jacaranda Health Limited (Jacaranda Maternity) to support innovations in neonatal intensive care and strengthen Jacaranda’s ability to provide life-saving services to underserved populations.
Jacaranda Maternity provides high-quality maternal health care at more affordable pricing than typical private providers, focusing on women in Nairobi’s low- and middle-income communities.
The new funding will support the opening of new hospitals, upgrading of neonatal care, and improvements to existing facilities.
Maternal and newborn health outcomes in Kenya remain a challenge, with maternal mortality still high despite improvements in skilled birth attendance.
Public health facilities play a central role but face capacity constraints, while access to reliable, quality care varies across regions and income groups.
Private healthcare providers offering essential maternity services at accessible price points can complement public provision.
Jacaranda Maternity aims to expand its network to six hospitals to achieve financial sustainability while scaling its impact. The healthcare provider is a recognised leader in promoting women’s health, with 71 percent of its staff being women, and a track record of effective environmental and social management.
“This investment will help Jacaranda Maternity provide life-saving care to more women and families while furthering Swedfund’s mission to promote inclusive and sustainable healthcare,” a Senior Investment Manager at Swedfund, Audrey Obara, said.
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