20 Sep 2016

The Minister of Health Ms Dorcas Makgato has encouraged individuals, families, civic organisations, charitable organisations and business people to work with government to reverse suicide tide that continued to hit humanity.
She said there was a need for all to constantly interact and share ideas in this fight because they had an important role to play in preventing suicide.
Ms Makgato was speaking in Sefhare at the launch of the suicide prevention campaign on September 17.
She said in 2003, the International Association for Suicide Prevention and the World Health Organisation (WHO) designated September 10  as World Suicide Prevention day  and Botswana had since been celebrating the day annually.
Ms Makgato described suicide as an act of intentionally causing one’s own death often committed out of despair and it was an ultimate act of self-destruction in which a person purposefully ended his or her own life.
She said according to international suicide statistics, over one million people died because of suicide worldwide each year and the global suicide rate was 16 per 100 000 people.
In average, she said, one person died by suicide every 40 seconds somewhere in the world and in every 20 of failed suicide attempts one was successful. She said the research had proven that women were more likely than men to attempt suicide while men were much more likely to succeed.
Ms Makgato said according to the latest WHO data published in May 2014, suicide deaths in Botswana reached 64 or 0.43 per cent of total deaths and Botswana was ranked number 142 in cases of suicide worldwide. She said these facts and figures underscored the urgency of taking action to mitigate the trend in loss of lives.
She said there was a need to focus on how all could work together with the meager resources at their disposal to build increased resilience in the individuals, families and the community in order to give dignity to individuals experiencing suicidal predispositions.
“This is in line with government’s commitment of empowering communities to take responsibility for their own health,” she said.
She said it was common knowledge that empowerment fostered ownership of decisions, processes and changes and could in this instance, drive the accomplishment of government’s focus on primary health care strategies. She said a project of this nature was an important milestone and she was confident that it would be successful.
Ms Makgato congratulated the staff and volunteers who worked in Sefhare and Mahalapye District Management Team for their “profoundly humane” dedication to preventing suicide and supporting those bereaved by it.
Dr Kunal Bose from Mahalapye Hospital said from the past years to date an observation was made that cases of suicide were escalating despite attempts to bring it under control. He said for this purpose an initiative was pioneered in Sefhare Primary Hospital which operates under Mahalapye District Health Management Team.
Dr Bose said the cases of para-suicide, successful suicides and cases of homicide murder which were recorded attributed to the birth of the initiative geared at reducing suicide cases in Sefhare and catchment areas. ENDS