12 May 2019

The Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Alfred Madigele has said the provision of quality health care, which will invariably lead to improvement in health outcome, requires effectively dealing with issues that have bedeviled the health sector for a very long time.

Speaking at the  three-day Botswana Nurses’ Union (BONU) annual general conference in Palapye recently, Dr Madigele said issues such as shortage of health workers, particularly in rural areas, professional development, and infrastructure support and technology innovations for improved efficiencies and overall effectiveness in service delivery needed to be addressed urgently.

He acknowledged the slow pace in addressing staff welfare issues, saying it was an area they needed to expedite going forward with ministry leadership’s quarterly interactions with BONU.

The minister said the nursing now and nursing strategy that were being finalised were expected to be launched before the end of June this year, noting that the two documents were crucial in defining and shaping nursing in the 21st century.

He also said another critical element of the road map, was the culmination of a number of bills that were at various drafting stages, while others were in their final stages of development.

He said some of them like the Health Research Bills and  Health  Professional Council Bill were still to be presented before Parliament.

Dr Madigele said though some issues of merging of the current Health Professionals Council and the Nurses and Midwifery Council had not been agreed upon, the main objective of the bills was to provide for regulation of all health professionals under one act for better coordination of patient care.

The minister said this year’s theme: “Workplace Violence - A challenge to Nurses’ Safety and Health Service Delivery” was appropriate, recalling many incidents that gave rise to it.

He  noted the unpleasant verbal and physical abuse aimed at the entire workforce, which he said resulted in not only fear of repeat incidents, but emotional and sometimes physical scars that would take time to fade.

He said submission of a petition entitled “Security and Safety” following the acts of violence, should be viewed in a broad sense of the general moral decay in society that should cause concern to all.

“Given the fact that the majority of the workforce are women who lack the physical might to defend themselves against these perpetrators, makes it even more worrisome,” he said.

Dr Madigele said his ministry was doing all to provide security for its workforce who in most cases operate 24 hours.

He said notwithstanding the meagre resources often available against all competing priorities, this would be augmented by the provision of CCTV cameras, which shall be monitored by the police, first for their 24-hour facilities and those that handle high numbers of patients. ENDS