04 Sep 2016

Deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health Dr Haruna Jibril says it is important to celebrate the achievements of players who ensure success in an organisation.

Speaking at the Routine HIV Testing (RHT) program awards in Francistown on Friday, Dr Jibril said HIV testing was the entry point to care.

“No national programme can be deemed as successful until all citizens have tested and know their status,” he emphasised.

He said the testing programme had been a long journey that was fortunately bearing fruits considering that last year the district of Francistown conducted 35 519 tests which was 20 percent of the population.

“This was a significant growth from 2014/15 period, where only 31 986 tests were conducted,” he said.

He congratulated efforts by the district in aiding the country to reach its goals, adding that the Greater Francistown District Health Management Team (DHMT) facilities played a greater role in the 64 percent of all the tests conducted in 2015/16.

Dr Jibril encouraged the DHMT to involve communities so that they could adopt and own up strategies of implementing programmes such as RHT and others to win the struggle. 

He said they should plan activities that would have a big impact in the shortest possible time as they were less than two years away from 2018, which the country has set for achieving the epidemic control.He commended the leadership from Francistown, Tonota Sub-district and North East district for their continued support on health issues and the fight against HIV/AIDS in their catchment areas.

Francistown DHMT coordinator Dr Gobezie Solomon expressed his gratitude to those who were receiving awards saying that their hard work and dedication to save lives was showing results. 

He said even though it had been a long journey, they were beginning to see a flicker of light as they had managed to reach out to many people compared to decades ago when the stigma was high with many people losing their lives through the pandemic. ENDS