10 Oct 2018

The Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Alfred Madigele, has been advised to extend health services beyond the country’s borders.

Speaking during a courtesy on the minister, Rutgers University president, Dr Robert Barchi, said Botswana could become a health systems hub if education and health were exported to other countries.

Currently, he said, the country was importing health care from South Africa and therefore there was no reason why other countries could not import the same from Botswana.

He called on Botswana to ensure provision of quality services saying delivering sustainable health care should be priority.

He explained that the courtesy call was an opportunity to learn about the challenges faced by Botswana’s health system and to allow the Rutgers University delegation to provide experience and or assistance for the benefit of the country.

For his part, Minister Madigele said the ministry had several challenges, among them, shortage of medical personnel especially doctors and midwives despite the existence of a medical school in Botswana.

He said the few doctors available were not enough to cover the whole country or attend to specific cases.

Dr Madigele said for the past 20 years, Botswana had been battling with HIV\AIDS but pointed out that progress had been made as most patients were now on ARV medication.

The minister also said transmission of HIV from mother to child had been reduced but said more still needed to be done to address the issue.

Dr Madigele said the ministry was working hard to intensify public education on diseases such as cancer, diabetes and hypertension.

He revealed that one third of the country’s adult population was hypertensive and diabetic thereby compelling Botswana to deal with both HIV and other scourges.

Diabetes and cancer were becoming a huge factor in terms of mortality, he said.

Dr Madigele said the provision of emergency services was hampered by the state of ambulances, which frequently broke down saying there was need to revamp the health transport system.

He said despite the challenges, opportunities had been identified noting that the ministry was working on organisational transformation for the purpose of decentralising health care to districts.

The ministry, he said, desired to strengthen the community health approach in dealing with diseases such as TB in order to decongest health facilities.

Dr Barchi and his entourage also toured Princess Marina Hospital to appreciate Botswana’s health care system. ENDs