Efforts to boost healthcare in the country have received a boost, as a foreign diagnostic firm moves to scale-up diagnostic centres across the country.
The diagnostic laboratory has been described as the weakest link in the country’s healthcare ecosystem.
Thousands of deaths recorded in the country have been attributed to lack of quality and timely testing.
Speaking in Abuja at a two- day Shalina Healthcare franchise summit, its Managing Director, Mr. Abbas Virji said the company decided to go into producing diagnostic equipment with the aim of bridging testing gap.
He said the plan is to provide affordable, accessible and quality testing centres across the country.
To do this, Virji said the three year old firm, which is an offshore of the Shalina Healthcare Pharmaceutical with presence in four countries is seeking franchise partners across the country.
He said with the franchise model, the firm is targeting 500 testing Points across Nigeria in next 3 years.
Virji explained that “By having more collection points and more scale, we can achieve lower prices for testing. The power of the community coming together, having one system — that is how we solve this.”
He stressed that diagnostic laboratories still remain the weakest link in healthcare which comprises the pharmacies, the doctors, the nurses, the pharmacies, the distributors.
“It’s all part of the system. I think the weakest chain in the system at the moment is diagnostics labs.
“There’s not enough labs. There’s not enough labs that are providing a good quality service that people can rely on.
“I think what we’re trying to do here today is to solve a very real problem of people in Nigeria not knowing fundamentally what is the root cause of their disease, What is their disease?
“Many people are not getting tested correctly. And the reason why they’re not getting tested correctly is because the test is very high or maybe the quality of the test is not very good or it’s not very convenient.
“ So we’re trying to solve that problem of making sure people can get access to quality test results that are affordable.”
He therefore said the franchise partnership arrangement “is a solution, we believe, that will help solve that problem.”
He said they want to work with other stakeholders in the entire healthcare space.
“So we want to work with local doctors, local pharmacists, people that have clinics, their own clinics, private laboratories. We want them to sign up to become part of the Shalina Diagnostics Network.
“We believe that the power of the community coming together and having one system where we can scale and grow together, right, that’s how we can achieve lower prices for testing, right, by having more scale.”
He said the franchise is open “for anybody that is willing to invest in this business. If they want to start a new business.
“They may not have the experience from the medical sector. We will help them with all of the compliance. We will help them with the quality standards.”
Speaking to delegates, Shalina Diagnostics CEO Mr. Nalin Singla framed the problem in three simple facts: there are not enough labs; the premium chains that do exist are priced out of reach for the common man; and local labs lack the trust, the consistency, and the fast turnaround that patients and clinicians depend on.
The company’s answer is a hub-and-spoke model based on 3 pillars : Quality, Affordability, Availability. Under the model, franchise partners operate small patient-facing collection centres and labs, gathering samples which are then processed at Shalina’s central reference laboratories equipped with advanced diagnostic technology. Results are returned electronically with agreed turnaround times.
Ms. Opeyemi Akinyele, Managing Director of Shalina Healthcare Nigeria, told the summit that the diagnostics expansion is a natural extension of a mission the company has pursued since 1999. “We are anchored in three pillars — Quality, Affordability, Availability — and we are committed to delivering better health outcomes for every Nigerian.”
The company counts household names among its Nigerian pharmaceutical brands — Shal’Artem, Ibucap, Germol, Epiderm — and has earned the trust of the Pharmaceutical council of Nigeria and the Nigerian Medical Association, while the manufacturing facility has earned the commendation of NAFDAC & The House Committee onAIDS, TB and Malaria (ATM). That institutional credibility, the company argues, is something no start-up franchise competitor can replicate.
The clinical argument for the summit was made by Dr. S.A. Sani, Associate Professor of Surgery and Consultant Surgeon at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, who laid out in unambiguous terms why access to diagnostics is not a luxury but a prerequisite for modern medicine
He said: “Diagnostics affect approximately 70 percent of all healthcare decision-making.
“They guide prevention, screening, treatment, and monitoring. Without them, clinicians are flying blind.”
Shalina Diagnostics does not arrive in Nigeria as an unknown quantity. Shalina Diagnostics is a company launched by Shalina Healthcare, a group that has been manufacturing and distributing medicines across Africa for more than four decades, operating in 18 countries with 108 distribution depots on the continent. In Nigeria alone, the parent company has been present for 27 years, touching the lives of 40% Nigerians through 17,000 healthcare professionals, running a one-billion-tablet factory in Lagos, and more than 150 products registered with NAFDAC. The diagnostics business, now three years old, already has over 30 locations in 4 countries.
