14 Dec 2016

 Botswana Meat Commission (BMC) chief executive officer, Dr Akolang Tombale, says they have upgraded their clinic to start offering anti-retroviral treatment to its staff.

Speaking at the commemoration of the World AIDS Day in Lobatse on December 9, Dr Tombale said the clinic upgrade would assist reduce congestion in government health facilities as well as treat BMC employees holistically.

He said the initiative would also reduce employees’ movement in and out of the plant, which would in turn save costs.

He also noted that like government health facilities, the BMC clinic would practice confidentiality on patients’ medical records.

Thus, he encouraged Lobatse residents and stakeholders to work together in effort to help minimise new infections.

He also urged Lobatse residents to focus on robust behaviour change campaigns, explaining that HIV prevention was primarily in the power of an individual.

On this year’s theme: Hands Up for #HIVprevention, Mr Tombale said it aimed at exploring aspects of HIV prevention and how they related to different specific groups of people.

He indicated that the theme was also a campaign to express views on what should be done to strengthen HIV prevention.

The campaign, Dr Tombale, said would cover aspects of HIV prevention, condom availability, harm reduction, voluntary safe male circumcision, prevention of mother to child transmission, HIV testing and viral suppression.

Furthermore, he noted that tuberculosis remained a public health emergency in Botswana, adding HIV continued to be a major risk factor for developing active TB diseases.

Thus, he implored Lobatse residents to encourage TB patients to ensure that they tested early for HIV to avoid HIV/AIDS related deaths.

He indicated that Lobatse’s average HIV co-infection was around 55 per cent.

Again, he said non communicable diseases cannot be forgotten in mentioning co-infections of HIV.

Dr Tombale said such diseases impacted heavily on national economies and businesses and led to decline in productivity, insurance claims rising and absenteeism from work also going up.  

He therefore urged all government departments, private sector and parastatals to take issues of wellness more seriously going forth.

“Countries globally are encouraged to reach the global targets of 90 per cent of people living with HIV knowing their status, 90 per cent of people who know their status to be on treatment, and 90 per cent of people on treatment to have viral suppression,’’ he said. ENDS