15 Mar 2017

Francistown Academic Hospital is to be operated by Indus Healthcare Group.

Project Coordinator of Indus Healthcare, Mr Gulwinder Singh said the he group had a strong international footprint in hospital operations and healthcare management.

Speaking in an interview,   Mr Singh said  Indus Health Care would, through Francistown Academic Hospital, bring to the second city clinical excellence through their patient centric approach, high end technological support and well established quality systems.

He said they do not only have a training agreement with government, but they will share skills and assist in the training of medical interns and medical students at the hospital under their specialist health services programme.

In addition, he said the training at the envisaged hospital would be a further formalisation and articulation of their intent towards sustainable solutions in the health sector.

Mr Singh explained that they intendeded to service the rest of Africa while being based in Botswana, adding that the advantage of calling Botswana their second home was that she had an educated work-force.

He said healthcare needed large numbers of qualified workers to support health professionals and Botswana had that potential to harness the work force to offer a good service.

Consequently, he also stated that Botswana’s central location within Southern Africa was now getting even better connected with envisaged better connectivity to the rest of Africa through Kazungula Bridge.

On other issues, he mentioned that they intended to work closely with the University of Botswana (UB) Academic Hospital and other medical schools to add value for teaching as they were a hospital with emphasis on practical hospital based training.

He further added that as competition in the private health care sector is tough, they were at an advantage because they would be based in the north, where they believe there is still need for additional capacity.

Mr Singh added that they intended to offer quality service that would attract clients from within and outside the country.

Deputy director of Clinical Services in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Ms Thandi Kgosiele explained that the Francistown Academic Hospital was going to be a referral private hospital and would follow the same procedure as all private hospitals in the country.

She noted that a lot of patients in the north region were going to benefit a lot as it would improve access to health services.

In an interview, a private medical practictioner with Lordsland Medical Centre, Dr Mothibi Rakanye said the hospital was a welcome development since they had been waiting for that kind of hospital to come and learn from it.

Dr Rakanye also said the hospital would enhance their practice and learn interesting cases from the hospital. ENDS