13 May 2014

Mortality of children on treatment is less than one per cent, says Botswana Baylor Children’s Clinical Centre of Excellence's (COE) executive director, Professor Gabriel Anabwani.

Prof Anabwani said this on May 12 during King Letsie III of Lesotho’s visit to the centre. He stated that death rate reduced from 4.7 per cent to 0.3 per cent ever since the opening of the clinic.

He noted that because children were no longer dying, the number of adolescents had been increasing with time and the centre had about 1 500 adolescents.

“If the current trends continue, PMTCT is successful; and we do not have any new children infected at birth then in eight or so years this cohort of children will have become adults, and the need for the centre to look after HIV/AIDS infected adolescents will be much smaller than it is,” he said.

He noted that people who were most likely to die from HIV/AIDS were adolescents as they failed to take medication since they were the most difficult group to take care of, “they take risks they do not think it will happen to them,” he said.

Prof Anabwani noted that as the population changed from younger children to adolescents the complexity of care increased. Furthermore, he said it was important for pregnant mothers to repeatedly undergo HIV tests citing risks of contracting the virus during pregnancy period, adding that it was also important to use protection.

Most of the infections they received, he said, were of women who tested early during pregnancy and got infected during late pregnancy stage or during breastfeeding.

The services offered at the clinic, he said, needed to reach high level of effectiveness and quality to ensure that when women test early and test negative, the test should be repeated during pregnancy, after delivery and during breastfeeding period.

The message, he said needed to be dispersed strongly to every expectant mother and father so as to get rid of the scourge.
In addition, Prof Anabwani said it was necessary to construct a new centre due to the aging population as the facility was not meant to accommodate adolescents.

For his part, King Letsie III asked whether the centre has any contingency plans of how the facility could be used without concentration on HIV/AIDS.

In response, Prof Anabwani explained that the mission has shifted away from HIV since 2003 to include other conditions that affect child health and have Paediatrics focusing on cancer in children, adding that they were also focusing on blood disorders and nutrition.

He said they were focusing on the conditions that threatened child health, noting they were going to evolve in order to improve child health and ensure that children live longer.

After the briefing, King Letsie III toured Botswana Baylor Children’s Clinical Centre of Excellence and the Adolescent centre. Ends