20 Sep 2016

Ngamiland district has recorded a decrease in the numbers of teenage pregnancy this quarter as compared to the previous quarter.
The district commissioner, Ms Chabongwa Matseka revealed when presenting District Development Committee (DDC) report to the full council that the trend for teenage pregnancy has decreased during this quarter mainly due to intensified health education.
She said a total of 117 teenage pregnancies were registered during the quarter under review as compared to 209 in the previous quarter where there were no teenagers under the age of 16.
She also raised a concern about high number of mothers who continued to fall pregnant while HIV positive.
She noted that the district recorded a total of 1290 deliveries as compared to 1230 in the last quarter and 335 mothers who delivered were HIV positive as compared to 298 in the previous quarter.
Ms Matseka further stated that 621 women were tested for HIV and 25 tested positive while 184 pregnant women had known their HIV status as compared to 226 in the previous quarter while 30 mothers delivered with unkown HIV status as compared to 34 in the last quarter.
She appealed to councillors to join hands with the district in disseminating information that promotes the importance of testing.
To mitigate the situation, she said they had intensified counseling and health education to the community and targeted population.
Regarding enrollment on ARV treatment, it was revealed that a total of 309 beneficiaries were enrolled and a total of 20 deaths were registered.  
Cumulative number of clients currently on highly active anti retro viral therapy is 22 815 as compared to 22 409 in the previous quarter.
On other issues, Ms Matseka informed the House that transport remains a major challenge to deliver quality service and meet the community's expectations and aspirations.
She revealed that the district did not reach the set target of 100 per cent mobile stops due to shortage of transport.
It was revealed that the mobile stop coverage was 73.1 per cent while in the previous quarter it stood at 72 per cent.
It was also reported that some schools and clinics are running short of food commodities because of shortage of transport.
 In addition, Ms Matseka said the district continues to face challenges in distributing food commodities to primary schools due to shortage of some commodities which include samp, beef, sorghum grain, UHT milk and vegetable oil which were not enough.
She said the newly introduced initiative like second meal programme end up being affected due to the shortage.
Under education, the House was informed that Rural Area Dwellers learners in different schools continue to abscond from classes.
 The department has a total of 826 students placed at various schools with 566 in primary schools, 233 in junior and 32 in senior schools respectively.
Responding to the report, Cllr Kebareeditse Ntsogotlho requested government to construct two- teachers schools in settlements to arrest the situation of pupils absconding noting that some dropped out due to the long distances for their parents.
He noted that pupils from Khwai are admitted in boarding schools as far as Kareng and for standard one student is a challenge to separate them from their parents. Construction of such schools would increase accessibility to primary education for beginners. ENDS