Zambezi Motors unveils homegrown mobile clinics
Ludo Kwapa | Friday March 1, 2019 13:05
Established in the early 1980s, Zambezi Corporation specialises in automobile retail, parts, service on a dealership basis, as well as water supply and treatment. The citizen-owned group is also active in the hospitality industry, with a hotel, lodges and game farming ventures.
Group founder and director, Ishmael Nshaka said Zambezi Motors would now pioneer vehicle assembly through the manufacture of specialised vehicles, starting with the mobile clinics. Manufactured under the group’s Zambezi Motors division, the group’s first mobile clinic unit took up to ten weeks to complete and will be shipped off to Tanzania.
“The drive to manufacture specialised vehicles locally is to make sure that our country is not denied permanent investment, technical development, employment opportunities, transfer of skills, long term stability and independence,” Nshaka explained. Together with other medical provisions, the mobile clinics have solar panels and a generator with which they are able to run for up to a week without external power.
The vehicles also feature fridges for both personal and medical purposes. Zambezi Corporation general manager, Uma Shankar Vadlamani said Botswana and Africa in general had difficulties establishing permanent health care facilities and mobile clinics were useful in the provision of health care.
“We strongly believe that while government is always taking the lead, the private sector should take the collective responsibility and come up with some added value, ideas, contribution and planning,” he said.
Vadlamani said Zambezi Motors was looking at producing medical disaster buses, which would accommodate 20 seated patients, 10-15 stretcher patients, clinical facilities in the rear and feature add-ons such as hydraulic stretcher and wheelchair lift.