21 Nov 2016

The chief executive officer of ACHAP, Dr Jerome Mafeni says ACHAP is positioning itself as a cutting edge and innovative organisation.

In his remarks during a media brief in Gaborone, Dr Mafeni said through the support of the board and staff they continue to work tirelessly to make ACHAP the organisation of choice in the sub continent when it comes to provision of public health services.

He said they had started implementing the robust strategic plan with the view to turn the organisation that was on the brink of closure into a giant organisation for population health services.

Dr Mafeni highlighted that a new unit was introduced to help mobilise unrestricted funding that was detached from direct donor funding.

The unit, he said utilises internal and external skills within and without the country and organisation to write proposals and implement projects.

He further said they had implemented projects, which one would never had imagined ACHAP implementing mainly because they were not health related and they include, Vision 2016 Synthesis Review and performance assessment and development of human resources for health development strategy and plan.

He added that another unit was envisaged to diversify their income streams is the ACHAP Training Centre, which they expect to be fully operational in the coming year and the centre would focus on customised short courses employing hands-on experiential learning approaches for immediate impact.

“We also recently made history by becoming the first private sector principal recipient of the Global Fund in Botswana and the project is focused on implementation of HIV/TB grants.
ACHAP, he said was charged with the responsibility of coordinating the delivery of all project activities and disbursement of all inventories or requests needed for the execution of daily activities by sub recipients.

He also said they had four sub-recipients namely BOCAIP, which implement community Tuberculosis care,  HIV testing and care, BONELA, Kagisano Society Women’s Shelter and Tebelopele Voluntary Counselling and Testing Centre as well as the Global Fund projects which were implemented in 16 districts in the country. Dr Mafeni also said that they were vigorously working on increasing their footprint in the continent especially in the SADC region.

For his part, ACHAP Botswana board chairperson, Dr Edward Maganu said ACHAP board of directors led by the chairperson, Ms Joy Phumaphi supported the development of an ambitious 10-year strategic business plan (2014-2024) to transform the organizstion from the old business model of delivering HIV interventions in Botswana funded by only two donors.

“With our new business strategy, we continue to work in the area of HIV/AIDS, which was our core, but we had expanded our scope to the broader health sector that includes TB, and in future to implement projects in non-communicable diseases and other diseases,” he said.BOPA