Anadkat donates K1.26 billion CT scanner to Blantyre Adventist Hospital

In a country where access to advanced diagnostic equipment remains the preserve of the privileged few, a single donation this week has thrown into sharp relief both the scale of need and the power of private philanthropy to fill the gaps left by chronic underfunding.

Hitesh Anadkat, the businessman behind First Capital Bank, has handed over a $720,000 (£565,000) CT scanner to Blantyre Adventist Hospital, in what he described not as an act of generosity but of obligation.

“This is my town, this is my city and this is my community, and the community needed this very badly,” Anadkat told those gathered for the unveiling. “So I thought: if not me, then who? If I can afford to do it, it is my obligation to do it.”

It is a sentiment that speaks to a wider, uncomfortable truth about healthcare provision across much of sub-Saharan Africa, where public hospitals often operate without basic diagnostic technology that would be taken for granted in wealthier nations — and where the burden of filling that gap increasingly falls to wealthy individuals and their foundations, rather than the state.

For Blantyre Adventist Hospital, the arrival of the machine marks a genuine turning point.

Chief executive Kirby Kasinja did not disguise his relief, describing years of operating without the equipment as a significant handicap to patient care.

“We missed this gadget,” he said, “and this donation takes us to another level.”

The scanner — a device that uses X-rays and computer processing to produce detailed images of the body’s interior, crucial for detecting tumours and other cancers — will now allow the hospital to diagnose conditions that previously required patients to travel elsewhere, often at considerable cost and delay, or go undiagnosed altogether.

Frank Sinyiza, director of curative and rehabilitative health services at Malawi’s health ministry, welcomed the donation as a boost to the wider system, noting that the equipment would ease pressures felt across the country’s hospital network, not just in Blantyre.

The Anadkat family’s involvement in Malawi’s health sector is not new; this latest gift follows previous contributions, part of a pattern of philanthropic engagement that has, over the years, quietly supplemented state provision in a sector still recovering from decades of underinvestment.

Whether such individual acts of generosity can ever substitute for sustained public investment remains an open question — one that will linger long after the scanner is switched on.

But for the patients who will pass through Blantyre Adventist Hospital in the months ahead, the answer, for now, is simply one of gratitude.

FCB is a subsidiary of Malawi Stock Exchange-listed FMB Capital Holdings Limited plc.