09 Mar 2016

A total of 36 couples tested for HIV in February as part of Tebelopele Voluntary Testing and Counselling Centre campaign to encourage couple testing. 

The campaign runs every year in February.

 Speaking in an interview, the acting centre coordinator for Tebelopele in Kasane, Ms Josephine Pie,t said they had set a target of 50 couples and throughout their campaign they concentrated in Kasane and Kazungula areas. 

She explained that the campaign was not rolled out to other villages due to time constraints, hence failure to reach the set target.

“Normally in our centre, we do not have many couples coming for testing, we experience low turn-up of couples coming over for testing, but February was different as more couples came for testing compared to other months where we get two to three couples in a month,” she said.  

To attract couples to come for testing, they used incentives such as dinner vouchers and liaising with lodges nationally.

Lodges such as Tati River Lodge and Adansonia hotel based in Francistown, Chobe Safari Lodge, Thebe Lodge, Chobe Mowana Lodge and others came on board by sponsoring the campaign.

“We also thought of bringing couples together and have a wellness day.  We arranged aerobics, fun health games, relationship enhancement games as well as having the District Health Management Team to do a health screening, including body mass index where most couples had the opportunity to learn what obesity is,” she added. Ends