Côte d'Ivoire targets 40K annual medical tourists via project ‘Abidjan Medical City’

Côte d'Ivoire looks forward to some 40,000 annual medical tourists in the first phase through its project titled ‘Abidjan Medical City’.

This project is part of the tourism development strategy of the country called ‘Sublime Ivory Coast’, which intends to make Abidjan a medical hub, through ‘Abidjan Medical City’, one of the nine projects structuring this strategy. In this regard, members of the Cabinet of the Ivorian Ministry of Tourism and Recreation, agents of the sub-trust structures and related departments, took part in a conference on breast and cervical cancer, accompanied by a screening session. The female staffs were screened for cancers of the breast and cervix. An initiative intervening in the extension of the ‘Pink October’ operation.

The Ministry of Tourism and Recreation through its Directorate of Human Resources allowed this conference punctuated by a screening session, around the theme ‘Women of the Ministry of Tourism and Recreation face the challenges of breast cancer and cervix the uterus, APA News noted. Representing the Minister of Tourism and Recreation, Siandou Fofana, at the conference on Thursday, December 5, 2019, at the Sciam building in Abidjan-Plateau, Camille Kouassi, his chief of staff, insisted on the opportunity and the challenge of such an initiative.

The Ivorian state wants to make tourism the third pole of economic and social development of Ivory Coast, reaching more than 5 million international tourists by 2025, positioning the country in the leading pack of African destinations.

“It is responsible for nearly 2059 cases per year in Côte d'Ivoire, while about 95 percent could be avoided through regular screening including mammography, breast ultrasound, palpation and, more generally, by a healthy lifestyle, with regard to the breast,” Dr Henri-Jacques Akaffou, an oncologist working at the Alassane Ouattara National Radiotherapy Center at the Cocody CHU opined.