Covid-19 Pandemic and Medical Tourism in Nigeria: Stories from Travel Agencies, Medics and Trapped Tourists in Ibadan
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2022-12
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Lead City University
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented humankind with a tremendous challenges which had affected business, health and other facet of life. The pandemic had revealed the nature of health- care delivery in Nigeria. Previous studies have focused more on describing the challenges of the pandemic, the causes and effect, without giving much attention to Medical Tourism in Nigeria: it impact on Travel Agencies, Medics and Trapped Tourists. This is a gap in knowledge this research sets -out to study using Ibadan as a case study. The outbound medical tourism provided the conceptual basis for this study. Data were collected and purposive random sampling was used to select thirty participated respondents through qualitative means from the key informants (the medical personnel, the trapped tourists and travel agencies). The data was analyzed by descriptive and bibliometric statistics techniques. The findings of the study revealed the categories of people do embark on medical tourism to be the rich, noble rich and senior civil servants. Findings also revealed that the medical personnel experienced high patronage during lockdown. Result from the travel agencies revealed some worker were retrenched while some placed on half salaries due to low patronage. As per lessons learnt, the medical profession learnt; Poor or Lack of medical facilities, equipment and specialist in most of the hospitals. The tourists and travel agencies equally experienced poor services and, low patronage. The study recommended improvement on the nature of health care facilities in the country to reduce medical tourism and advised medical tourist to first seek information within before embarking on International tour. Development of a control roadmap for Covid-19 through partnership and stakeholder’s engagement for vaccine research and provision for the existence of Covid-19 laboratory protocols that will diagnose, treat, monitor, contact tracing of infected persons with Covid-19 in line with global best practices also recommended.
Keywords: Covid-19 Pandemic, Medical Tourism, Nigeria, Travel Agencies, Medics and
Trapped Tourists.
Word count: 300
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Kate Turabian