02 Aug 2017

When most professional retire from office jobs, most opt to go into farming to spend their last days, only a few continue with their profession into retirement such as

Dr Poloko Kebaabetswe, a health professional who has decided to render her services to Batswana at a minimal cost.

After her early retirement as a Director of Health System Research Unit at University of Botswana Medical School, Dr Kebaabetswe opened a wellness centre called Green World Healthy Lifestyle and Wellness Centre.

The center situated at Newtown ward next to Central Coffins at Serowe opened its doors last year December.

In an interview she said although she uses Green World products, the emphasis is not on the products but health education and health promotion (wellness), the aim being that people should know the status of their health before taking any decision.

 “As a health professional, I have realised that people are ill, and most times they don’t know what is really wrong with them and there is an aspect of surprise when they get to the hospitals because their bodies would be deceiving them that everything is ok with their bodies only to learn otherwise,” she said.

Dr Kebaabetswe said in most cases people do not know how their bodies function, hence she decided to open the centre with the aim of empowering people to know and understand their bodies and take a step in preventing non communicable diseases.  

“I focus more on preventive medicine and preventive public health. So what I do, I offer a lot of health education which is specific to an individual,” she said. She encourages people on healthy eating, looking at the nutrients people lack and advice on supplement to be taken.

Dr Kebaabetswe stated that in her health and promotion education she is guided by a machine called quantum which scans and shows the amount of nutrients in ones body.

She would thereafter advice on what type of food one has to eat which she says mostly would prefer traditional food.

“This machine only scans, and do not diagnose diseases but just to see how human body works and the risks,” she said.

Dr Kebaabetswe explained that at the wellness center the focus was more on traditional foods, and that the products she has helps in building the bodies and boosting the immunity.

She said they also provide counseling “when we scan a person, for example the liver might be covered with fats, we prepare a person for such,”she said.

Dr Kebaabetswe said the center has clients of different age group, but pointed out that she is happier that men are coming in large numbers because usually they do not frequent the clinic to check their well being.

“Men don’t usually go to clinics, I don’t know maybe here they feel less threatened,”she said.

She explained that she also takes her education to villages outside Serowe such as Paje and Malaka among many others, noting that of recent she has been visiting schools because she has realised that teachers do not have time for wellness or going for programmes that help them stay healthy so she makes time for them by going to their workplaces.

Although this is her business that she started for means of survival, Dr Kebaabetswe says she is more into helping people than business because when it comes to elderly people she at times give them 50 percent discount for scanning.

“For scan I charge P100, but with elders I sometimes charge P50 so that they be able to buy the foods for supplements”. ENDS