13 May 2014

Tsabong Junior Chamber International (JCI)  chapter recently hosted a youth against AIDS workshop to address the national theme of Zero New HIV infections, Zero Discrimination, Zero Aids related deaths by 2016.

When giving welcome remarks, the chapter president, Ms Abigail Engleton said JCI counted on collective actions to come up with solutions of which they could fight the society’s greatest challenges.

“We believe we should act on behalf of the Tsabong community and ultimately be part of the solution to the betterment of their livelihoods,” she said. Ms Engleton explained that JCI’s active young citizens aimed to work with different vulnerable people in society, including those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

She said it was time the young and old joined hands to strive for zero new infections. She said she believed that information and public talks would go a long way in impacting the society to make a change for the better.

For her part, family nurse practitioner, Ms Gaolape Seoko said the society needed mindset change for Botswana to achieve its aim of moulding a healthy nation.

She said stigma and discrimination continued to be the main challenge that hinders the nation to attain zero new infections. She said mindset change is the key to achieve the best.

“People have a tendency of making their own beliefs and basing their decisions on myths but I would encourage that health practitioners know better and they should be contacted for any health related issues,” she said.

She further said safe male circumcision, prevention of mother to child transmission, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections including HIV and the Masa ARV programme are available as government’s aim to enhance prevention efforts and reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS on Botswana.

“The successes of the Masa ARV programme include, increased survival rate, just about 50 000 adult deaths through the end of 2007 and the five year survival rate of patients is 88.6 per cent since the inception of the programme in January 2002 thus stabilisation of the orphan population.” said Ms Seoko.

She further said the government has since embarked on intensive and extensive training for health care providers in order to ensure effective and efficient implementation of the ARV programme. Ends