Buhari to travel to London for ‘medical follow-up’

President Muhammadu Buhari will on Friday travel to London, the United Kingdom, for a “scheduled medical follow-up”.

Femi Adesina, special adviser to the president on media and publicity, says the trip is a follow-up to his last visit.

“President Muhammadu Buhari will proceed to London, the United Kingdom on Friday, June 25, 2021, for a scheduled medical follow-up,” Adesina said in the statement released on Thursday.

“He is due back in the country during the second week of July, 2021.”

As president, Buhari has spent 183 days getting medical help in the UK.

This is the president’s second medical vacation in 2021. The president had in March travelled to the UK for what the presidency described as a “routine” check-up.

Following the criticism that trailed his last trip, Garba Shehu, presidential spokesperson, had defended the president, saying his decision to embark on the medical trip is “wise and quite correct”.

“I think that, unfortunately, there is the misconception of the president’s trip, seen in the context of medical tourism,” he had said.

“President Buhari is not a medical tourist — if somebody has kept retainership with medical experts; we are talking about 30 years and plus.

“Each year, they view you and examine you and give you a pass and advise you on what to do. Would you, given this position, be changing your doctors every other year, because there is a chance the distance will be shortened?

“I think the president is wise and quite correct in his decision that he retains consistently the set of doctors who have ensured good health for himself.”

In August 2019, the president had said the country was losing about N400 billion to medical tourism annually.

Buhari had attributed the situation to the country’s health sector’s “inability to combat outbreak of deadly diseases and mass migration of medical personnel out of the country”.