09 Nov 2017

President Lieutenant General Dr Seretse Khama Ian Khama says government has made strides to improve access to health care services in the past decade.

Delivering his last State of the Nation Address in Parliament on November 6, the President said government had embarked in a robust organisational transformation strategy to decentralice services targeted at quality health care delivery.

Such exercise, he said, had enabled government to close the gaps that challenged access to health care and increased the number of people accessing basic health care in remote areas.

He said adding that “84 per cent of the population was accessing basic health services within the five kilometers radius due to construction and upgrading of clinics and hospitals,” he said.

President Khama disclosed that 31 clinics and health posts had been constructed while some were upgraded including 10 clinics that were donated by the private sector an Non-Governmental organisations.

Further, he said, more health facilities such as clinics and hospitals continued to be constructed through the Economic Stimulus Programme.

He noted improvements had been made in service delivery at all district hospitals where five basic specialist services such as general surgery, internal medicine, pediatrics, Obstetrics, gynecology and Anesthesiology were offered.

He added that new improvements were made such as introduction of cardiac surgery, organ transplant, spinal surgery, and arthroplasty.

President Khama stated that 49 clinics which initially opened up to 12 hours in 2008 were now offering a 24 hour service to meet the health care demands of the people.

In other improvements he said, national health quality standards for medical facilities and services were developed to provide a yardstick that would gauge facility performance to guidance on areas that needed to be worked on.

He said adding that the standards continued to be used in all health facilities nationwide to ensure quality assurance.

To that end, he said government was at an advanced stage working on the Health Quality Act to enforce adherence to these standards. ENDS