05 Dec 2018

 Medinet Heart Centre, a Polish private clinic with ambitions of setting up in Botswana, has been assured of the protection of their intellectual capital in the country.
President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi made the assurance during a visit to the Foundation of Cardiac Surgery Development in Zabrze, just outside Katowice in Poland on December 4.
Botswana, he said, wanted to associate with innovative intellectual capital saying its assurance of knowledge and innovation with regard to the rule of law, was second to none.

Regarding challenges raised during presentations, he said, government was committed to ensuring that they would be sorted out in a bid to benefit from the envisaged medical investment opportunity.
He expressed happiness for the centre’s capacity to draw in business and wanting to transform Botswana into a medical tourism centre.Dr Masisi said particularly amazing was the involvement of the private sector in the initiative, saying Botswana wanted to emulate the strategy and minimise government participation.

The centre was established in 2002 as the first private heart clinic in Poland specializing in cardiac surgery while the foundation was formed to support cardiac surgery development as well as to introduce into clinical usage modern technologies of heart treatment.
In an interview, the centre’s key project manager Dr Hanna Kociemska said the aim of the envisaged Botswana project was to establish proper care for patients from the diagnostic process till post-operative rehabilitation and further ambulatory supervision.

She said the development of such an entity should be supported by government through the Ministry of Health and Wellness and Medinet Heart Centre Poland.
Dr Kociemska said some of the challenges identified had been the establishment of clinical and research centres of excellence that could serve both regional and outside customers.
She said they were also looking at ways through which the provision of high quality health services could contribute to economic diversification and job creation.
Dr Kociemska said the HIV/ Aids had been successfully dealt with in Botswana and was now declining.

She however  said due to demographic and epidemiology pyramid, heart disease and diabetology would become a significant problem.
Mortality in Botswana was on the increase due to all heart and cardiovascular diseases, she said.
President Masisi was taken on a tour of the high tech laboratories and state of the art equipment such as the mechanical heart assist prosthesis. ENDS