This is an excellent thread that captures the challenging reality of the hospital business in Nigeria. A couple of things to add:

Healthcare is not quite as inelastic as we assume. The RAND insurance experiment indicated that healthcare demand is actually sensitive to price.

https://twitter.com/Rufyb/status/1994318762502152552

This elasticity is related to the type of healthcare. Emergency healthcare for instance, is more inelastic than, say, vaccinations. For the former, you will sell your kidney to pay for it if you have to, whereas in the latter, you wouldn't be bothered if you don't have the cash.

In case you no understand, see wetin him mean. If you buy machine wey go bring money for your business, You go calculate how long you go use the machine before you throw am away. For this sewing machine now make we assume say na 5 years.

https://twitter.com/AN0WA/status/1912436077484253333

E mean say na only N110,000 from the machine you dey use every year. (550,000/5). Monthly na only around N9,000 (110,000/12). So you just need target monthly gain wey pass N9,000 and your machine don work the work wey you buy am for. This thing I describe now na "depreciation"

First off, we need to explain this confusing idea of left and right. It originated in the French Revolution where those who sat on the left of parliament opposed the monarchy & supported the revolution while those who sat on the right were supportive of the monarchy. 🧵

https://twitter.com/XBrianDennis/status/1857837181592572095

In modern times, It has connotations from an economic and social perspective. On the economic side, left-wing symbolizes pro-poor (welfare-oriented; demand government subsidies) politics whereas right-wing stands for pro-business (free-market; limited government) politics.

Reviewing Nigerian hospital mortality data and amazed at the mortality rates. Some centres are reporting over 11% mortality even in adults <65. This is crazy oh, I can't have a >1 in 10 chance of dying on admission to a hospital, what exactly is the hospital doing? Yesterday I posted about how management is the key factor in the success of companies. Suggests to me that our poor hospital outcomes are directly tied to poor management. Even with meagre resources, we shouldn't have 11% mortality.

https://twitter.com/docneto/status/1553984370683396096

A guy in his 30s woke up with chest pain. His partner drove him to hospital and on the way there he passed out and was on death's door. Ambulance was called, CPR started. His heart stopped 13 times and was restarted each time. He was saved from his heart attack. This was in a European country with excellent facilities. In my dear Nigeria a similar heart attack happened to a friend's dad, first off the ambulance couldn't transport the person in a timely manner. When they got to the hospital, no facilities were available to treat him.

With more capital coming into Africa to fund startups it's important to know what the data says on raising capital. Stuff like criteria investors look at, usual valuation and round sizes. If you're raising VC in Africa this is data you need to inform your raise. 🧵 First of all, what factors influence investors decision to back a startup. The team, its ability to generate revenue and the cost to duplicate are the top factors cited by investors.

Doing some research and turns out the prevalence of female sexual dysfunction is about 41%. Top conditions are:
1. Low libido
2. lubrication difficulties
3. No orgasms
Interestingly, being African is a risk factor. I'd say likely cultural. More sexual health services needed! Seems there's interest in the topic so dug a bit further to find a specific Nigerian study to get more data from. Hold on to your seat people, this is fascinating.

The study interviewed 384 women attending a clinic in Ife. Keep this in mind as it may not be generalizable.

If you're a young Nigerian grad with good people skills, you should consider getting into tech sales.

Learn tech sales and get very good at it.

I promise you that in 5 years you will be extremely sought after.

Here's a 10 step🧵 to get you to tech 💵without writing code 1. Read this book. blog.close.com/outbound-sales…

2. Find a B2B startup whose product you like. Offer to bring them leads for free.

3. Implement the book, generate a huge lead list and pass it along.

4. Convince them to hire you to close the leads on commission first. They will.

1/ The American drug regulator (FDA) has reportedly licensed a new experimental drug for the treatment of Covid-19.

Is it time to celebrate? Hmm, not so sure. Let’s review some basics (and not so basics) to give you the tools to better understand what’s happening. 2/ This thread is a basic introduction to medical drug experiments and related statistics.

Please stay with me. It might get boring but trust me it will be useful.

Medical drug experiments or 'clinical trials' is the way we find out if a drug works or not.

Simple Immunology for understanding covid-19 testing kits. A thread:

Much talk is going on about the use of rapid tests for covid-19 but it's not a straight forward thing. At the end of this thread, you will understand why with the help of this graph.

But some basics first. The immune system is the bodies defence against disease.

White blood cells are the cells of the immune system. They are involved in protecting the body against infectious disease and foreign invaders like bacteria or viruses.

Finally spoke to someone that also agrees that there is no sense in Nigeria doing more widespread COVID-19 testing. It should continue to be very targeted at people with the highest risk. Conservative estimate for current PCR is $120 per test. Test 1,000 people = N43 million. We can ill afford that especially when the test itself doesn't tell you by itself who will or will not need ICU. What's more important is the respiratory status of the person. The management of this respiratory status is largely the same whether COVID positive or not.

Reviewing some more COVID-19 related data and I'm more convinced that ventilators will not be the choke point to solve for in Nigeria. This is because of how poorly our systems are set up. The challenges will be further upstream. My thoughts; Only about 5% of the Nigerian population is above 65. This means the profile of people needing critical care will be generally younger. This group usually tolerate illnesses for longer than older people so early recognition of at risk patients is key.

How I ended up here is a testament to the power of networks and working for the good of a larger whole. I didn't know it but I set the ball rolling some 3 years ago when I decided to build a community around health technology entrepreneurship in Nigeria.

https://twitter.com/docneto/status/1180651543441367046

It was 2016, I'd moved back to Nigeria in 2015 to build a #healthtech company. After struggling for a while trying to figure things out myself, I contacted a few people and set up @DigitalHealthNg. My goal was to create a support group and share knowledge among ourselves.

Some 2 years ago, I went to visit one of my pharmacy clients in Gbagada, Lagos to introduce some of our new software features to them. While there, an elderly gentleman came in with a prescription for 3 critical heart failure medications: Digoxin, Frusemide and Ramipril. #thread The man handed the script over and looked on as the pharmacist tallied the costs. I still vividly remember the disappointing look on his face as he told the pharmacist that he couldn't afford it. He walked away sullenly, mumbling something about sending someone later.