20 Mar 2013

The Ministry of Health (MoH) continues to suffer from shortage of health professionals, Minister Dr John Seakgosing said when tabling the ministry’s P4.54 billion budget estimates for financial year 2013/14 in Parliament on Monday.

He said his ministry has so far addressed the challenge through external recruitment of health professionals as well as through assistance of development partners.

“My ministry continues to train health care professionals through the Institute of Health Sciences. During the financial year 2012/13 we expect an output of 711 health care professionals in various categories within health training institutions. The shortage of lecturers hinders us from fully utilising the existing capacity within the health training institutions,” said Dr Seakgosing.

The P4.54 billion budget for the Ministry of Health included a P4, 4 billion recurrent and P133 million as development estimates.

The minister told Parliament that his ministry was gearing towards implementing the revised National Health Policy which was approved in December.

“Various activities are being under taken towards its implementation. These include organisation and management review to strengthen capacity of the District Health Management Teams to ensure delivery of high quality health care services to Batswana,” the minister explained.

Dr Seakgosing also said the Health Research Council Bill had been vetted by the Attorney General Chambers and was expected to be presented in the November 2014 sitting of Parliament. The Bill is intended to regulate research on human subjects.

Parliament also heard that his ministry had made significant progress in harmonizing roles with the ministries of Local Government and Rural Development, and that of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism for effective health care waste management in the country.  He said the issue of health care waste management had been a major challenge over the past few years.

Dr Seakgosing also informed Parliament that due to concerted efforts by government to ensure universal access to anti-retroviral treatment among people infected with HIV, the rate of tuberculosis notifications had continued to decline.

“Treatment success rate has increased from 79 per cent in 2009 to 81.4 per cent in 2010, and is approaching the global target of 85 per cent,” he said.

However, he expressed concern about the growing incidents of non-communicable diseases, adding that  his ministry has put in place strategies to address them through health promotion and public education awareness.

Under the ministry’s recurrent budget estimates, the Department of Clinical Services will take the largest share of P3 billion. The department houses all government hospitals, clinics, central medical stores and the national health laboratory.

The ministry’s headquarters will get the second largest share at P558. 5 million. The third largest share will go to the Department of HIV/AIDS Prevention, which will get P537 million. ENDS