Interview with Dr Yemi Johnson of First Cardiology Consultants

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Dr. Johnson: I am a Lagosian, born in Lagos, schooled in Lagos. I went to Kings college for my secondary school education and later went to UNILAG for my higher education and Idi araba for Medical school. I did my housemanship in Lagos and my national service in the Old Bendel state in a town called Jatu.

After my NYSC, I went to the USA for my postgraduate training. I studied public health at Yale University and later went to Columbia University where I majored in Internal Medicine. I did my first cardiology degree in New York and later did Interventional cardiology in California, I then went into private practice in California and from there to North Carolina where I specialized in interventional and vascular cardiology and after 28 years in the USA, I decided to come back to Nigeria in 2008.

Q: Coming back, what will you say was your greatest challenge?

Dr. Johnson: There were quite a few challenges, one was the lack of infrastructure. Everything that is required to run a hospital; water, power, land, manpower was inadequate. It is 10 times harder to run a hospital in Nigeria than in the USA. Power was particularly challenging.

Q: Looking back at the last ten years, compare and contrast what it was when you first arrived and how it is now

Dr. Johnson: When I came back, invasive and interventional cardiology did not exist. There were no cardiac cardiology labs in the country. Nobody could do angioplasty. Open heart surgery was being done intermittently by teams coming from abroad to do missionary or free work, there was no consistent program. But nowadays, things have changed not just in cardiology but in other aspects of medicine. Right now in the field of cardiology and cardiovascular surgery, 90% of what needs to be done can be done in Nigeria, no need to go abroad. The problem is a lot of people do not know that these surgeries can be done in Nigeria and at a high level of quality.

People don’t know this because we are restricted with marketing and advertising, the foreign doctors and hospitals come in with impunity and advertise openly but hospitals in Nigeria are restricted due to laws. Right now, the only thing we can’t do is heart transplant, everything else we can do. We have doctors who can do that, we have many highly trained cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons abroad who can come in and help with procedures.

Q: In 5 to 10 years time, where do you see cardiology and cardiac surgery in Nigeria?

Dr. Johnson: I am pretty certain we would be a destination in Africa and we will start to compete with other places like Singapore and India.

Q: How can we increase inbound medical tourism?

Dr. Johnson: There are many things we can do like letting people know what is going on in terms of surgeries that can be done in Nigeria. Something holding back explosion of health care services is funding. There is a lot of demand for services but the ability to pay is the problem. There are certain things that can be done to reduce the cost.

There are Government policies which were introduced for good reason but may have become outdated and are now hindering the improvement of the healthcare system. The approval process of highly complicated products like pacemakers and ICDs by NAFDAC and SONCAP is usually cumbersome and makes it expensive. The products of a number of major companies are more expensive in Nigeria when compared to other countries.

Lastly, government should get out of the business of providing tertiary care and concentrate on primary care and funding and also make National Health Insurance effective.

Q: What are you doing in terms of sharing knowledge and growing the next generation of cardiologists?

Dr. Johnson: First Cardiology is transitioning into FCC healthcare because we have started to do a lot more than cardiology. We are now doing things like orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery etc, First Cardiology is now a hospital and not just a Cardiology center.

We do have various young doctors who are being trained. Most of them get admission to do their residency training abroad and they go abroad to complete their four months training after undergoing some training here and by next year, we shall start seeing the first couple of them come back home. We also have younger cardiologists like a cardiologist who trained in Nigeria, he has stayed under me now for a few years and now he can do a lot of things I do. Very soon, we’ll start to have MOUs with some teaching hospitals.

Q: Any thought of residency in the future?

Dr. Johnson: Maybe, but that has to go through some formalities, it is a bit complicated but we are getting there. Right now, we just finished discussing on how we are going to work with some University teaching hospitals to have cardiology residents rotate through here. The nurses undergo training on a weekly basis.

Q: What will be your advice for the younger doctors coming back?

Dr. Johnson: I wish the younger ones will come back. The younger ones make so much money abroad so coming back is a problem. It is a lot of sacrifice to come back and work at this level. You have to have the passion and patriotism to come back. Right now, there is a large network of Nigerian doctors with skills that can be applied anywhere in the world, so in a few years, Government just needs to put some policies in place and make it easier for people to get loans.