Meeting Africa’s needs

The African market is highly sensitive to the price of medical equipment, because of the lack of funding, said Ma Qiyuan, President and CEO of Time Medical holding Co., a Chinese medical diagnostic imaging company.

“Different from West European and North American markets, African countries have high requirements in terms of the ease of use and maintenance of the devices, due to backward infrastructure and inadequate medical professionals,” said Ma.

Then how do Chinese manufacturers meet the needs of the African market?

“We have our African experts and local employees who frequently bring back information regarding demand and feedback from our dealers and end users to our headquarters,” said Wang.

In addition, Mindray also holds workshops on a regular basis. “Doctors make suggestions [on equipment improvement] for workshops, which we take and forward to the research and development department,” Dusan Simovic told Chinafrica. Simovic is a Johannesburg-based product manager for English-speaking African countries in Mindray’s International Marketing Department.

To better meet doctors’ needs in rural communities and remote areas, the company has developed portable devices, and products with uninterrupted power supply (UPS) systems to deal with unstable power supply problems.

“Also, our hand-carried color ultrasound device is popular in remote areas in Africa as it is easy to carry and convenient to use by local medical practitioners in making ultrasound scanning,” he added.