Journalists are shown a CT simulator machine at the Heart and Cancer Treatment Centre. File
Heart and cancer patients can now access quality treatment locally at reduced cost after Nairobi’s Aga Khan University Hospital opened Monday a state-of-the-art centre for both diseases.
Built at a cost Sh4.25 billion ($50 million), the Heart and Cancer Treatment Centre is also hiring Kenyan specialists working elsewhere in the world to help reverse the migration of medical professionals abroad.
“With this facility, we are offering a solid foundation for building an expanded corps of accomplished medical professionals in East Africa,” said His Highness the Aga Khan, during yesterday’s official opening of the unit.
“Let us put behind us the days when young Africans had to go to other parts of the world for quality medical education - and too often stayed there,” he said. “Similarly, let us also forget the days when African patients had to travel to other parts of the world for quality medical care.”
The Aga Khan, Imam of Ismaili Shia Muslims, is chairman of the Aga Khan Development Network – which runs social, economic and cultural services across the world, including the Aga Khan hospitals, which hosts the cancer centre. The new unit will also offer specialised fellowship training in cardiology and oncology, currently not available in East Africa and will recruit lecturers from around the world.
A new 600-bed hospital to be built as part of the centre will award bachelors and masters degrees in medicine, surgery and nursing, and in future, doctorates. President Kibaki, presiding over the opening of the centre, said it opened a new door for Kenya to become a major destination for medical tourism.
“It should enable our professionals and expatriates working outside Kenya to return and offer the much-needed services to our people,” the president said. Africa has in the past two decades reported a growing number of cancer cases even as the continent faces a shortage of specialists. Kenya had less than 15 cancer specialists as at the end of last year.
The fight against cancer and heart diseases has also been weakened by the lack of training for doctors locally, leaving aspiring students with the expensive option of seeking skills abroad at a cost of more than Sh1 million or about 10,000 pounds a year in the UK.
The cost of specialised treatment abroad can also run into millions, excluding costly college accommodation and travel. The Aga Khan urged government and financial institutions to come up with ways to cut the cost of specialised treatment.
“Throughout the world, the cost of good healthcare is prohibitively high, especially for the poorer segments of the population and this is why the Aga Khan University Hospital, through its Patients Welfare Programme, offers an average subsidy of 50 per cent to those who are unable to afford full cost of care,” he said. In the long run, there would be need for a combination of cost redistribution, endowment funding, credit and insurance offerings to make specialised treatment affordable.
About 50 Kenyans die from various forms of cancer daily.
