27 Mar 2017

Lobatse residents have been implored to support Lobatse District Health Management Team (LDHMT) in all their strategies that will be implemented to increase HIV testing, ARV uptake and compliance to treatment to allow the country to continue to benefit from the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Deputy Town Mayor, Mr Francis Mokwena said this when delivering the mayor’s speech on her behalf on Tuesday during a special council session.
He said HIV continues to be a challenge despite all strategies in place to reduce its effects.
He mentioned that President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is one of the donating agencies that support the country to address the scourge of HIV/AIDS.
However, he mentioned that a recently conducted study by the agency reflects that Botswana is still lagging behind in attaining United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) strategy of 90:90:90 goals to control the epidemic.
He informed them that PEPFAR had only seven months remaining in the financial year 2017/18 to support Botswana.
He said in order for the country to continue benefitting from this fund, there must be intensive innovative strategies for case finding and Anti-Retro viral Therapy initiation.
Since the funding from PEPFAR is based on compliance to the 90:90:90 strategy, there is need for effective collaboration among all stakeholders to participate in all identified strategies, he said.
In addition, he encouraged the public to join hands with DHMT officials also to assist to review strategies on how to address the new trends of the spread of Tuberculosis (TB) and contain the scourge.
He said DHMT would conduct public awareness activities to sensitise the community on the effects of TB and its intervention strategies since Botswana is ranked among the hardest hit countries in the entire world.
As a matter of healthy living, Mr Mokwena also said 2017/18 refuse collection transportation and disposal services in institutional houses is at evaluation stage.
He said a budget provision of P1 160 600 under the recurrent budget has been awarded.
He said the coverage of refuse collection has expanded due to the inclusion of more housing units from Boswelatlou ward, from 2 142 housing units in 2016/17 to 2 548 housing units during 2017/18 financial year.
He said 11 locally based waste management companies would benefit under this initiative and the works under service contracts would start at the beginning of May and end in March 2018.
On a different note, he said the council had realised that the use of public toilets free of charge, especially those in busy areas such as town centre and bus rank has proved not to be cost effective.
 He said it is on that note that consideration for outsourcing of public toilets be made a priority because the new development would assist the council on the cost of provision of services.  ENDS