Short Takes: Bringing Affordable Medical Imaging to Botswana

Meet Nita Bhagat, a hotelier turned owner of Village Imaging, a radiology practice in Botswana. Hear how her father’s struggle with cancer led her business in yet another new direction, one that now helps everyone in her country to get better, closer, faster health care.

Nita Bhagat and her cardiologist husband came to Botswana from Zimbabwe in 2003 as economic refugees. With her life and career uprooted, she worked as a receptionist in her husband’s medical clinic. Bhagat got an immediate education in Botswana’s health care system, which uniquely provides free care to all citizens. She learned that since there were no MRI machines in the country, the government was forced to send (and pay for) patients to go to South Africa to get the care they needed. Bhagat seized the opportunity and opened the first MRI scanning facility in her new home.

Entrepreneurs often create new business opportunities when faced with a personal need or crisis. For Bhagat it was her father’s cancer diagnosis. Although Bhagat’s father could afford the best treatment in Botswana, it wasn't necessarily available with only one radiation oncology center in the entire country. “Every time he was having treatment, he kept saying to me, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?’” she remembers. Bhagat eventually took her father’s advice to open a radiation oncology center based in the community, not a hospital, so patients can get back home sooner and feel better psychologically. 

Hear how Bhagat’s caring heart and business mind are driving her business in new directions to meet the needs of Botswanans and her vision to bring life-saving treatments to neighboring countries in Africa.

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