20 Jun 2016

Kabelo Wame of Lotsane Senior Secondary School has won first position in the national essay competition in which 232 form five students from different schools participated. 

The student is said to have produced a marvelous piece of essay, where they were to write under the question, ‘what are the social determinants of health (social factors that influence health, give examples relating to the community you live in, given your understanding of the social determinants of health)

When giving a key note address at the ceremony at President Hotel recently, Assistant Minister of Health, Dr Alfred Madigele congradulated the winners and all those who took part in the competition.

He said he was delighted to have partnered with their counterparts from ministry of education in leading and creating awareness on an approach that systematically took into account the health implications of decisions on health.

“Let me thank the Ministry of Health and that of Education and Skills Development in creating awareness and initiating a dialogue on the social determinants of health through the perspective of secondary school students,” he said.

He conveyed that everyone was aware of the social challenges which were be-devilling the schools and have witnessed the consistent decline in examinations results which could be attributed to numerous factors.

“What better platform can we have than this one, where students themselves look into these issues and lead a national dialogue on them through essays,” he said.

He expressed that evidence showed that education was a strong predictor of long term health and quality of life, as scholars have indicated several interrelated pathways through which education attainment was linked with health.

“There is documented literature linking higher education attainment to improved health as more educated individuals will most likely make better informed health related decisions for themselves and their families,” he said.

He said higher education attainment could also play an important role in health by shaping employment opportunities, which were a major determinants of economic resources. 

He also noted that attaining higher education could also influence social and psychological factors such as greater personal control, which has frequently been linked with better health and health related behaviors.  

“The concept of health in all policies (HiAP) is a vehicle to tackling social determinants of health and is at its infancy in Botswana,” he said.

He said the idea of HiAP came about as they were interested in doing better in involving other sectors in health through their individual sectoral works under their development policies and programmes, and in the process using their respective sectoral resources. 

In the competition four students from different schools received position 3,  two students scooped position 2, winning themselves laptops and external hard drives, courtesy of Ministry of Health and World Health Organisation. ENDS