08 Sep 2019

Permanent secretary in the Ministry for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration has called on young people to change behaviour since they are most affected by HIV/AIDS.

Mr Thuso Ramodimoosi said this at the month against HIV/AIDS launch in Gaborone recently.

Mr Ramodimoosi also noted that Batswana should work together to fight HIV/AIDS in order to realise aspirations of a healthy nation by 2036.

He noted that efforts in the fight against HIV/AIDS should be infused within e review of the eleventh National Development Plan (NDP 11) to give impetus to concerted efforts against the pandemic noting that sensitisation alone was not effective.

He commended efforts by First Lady Neo Masisi to champion HIV prevention, care and support programmes for adolescents and youth, saying that was critical to supporting sensitisation of the already available efforts.

Giving statistics about the state of the epidemic, National AIDS and Health Promotion Agency (NAHPA) research, monitoring and evaluation manager, Mr Robert Selato said prevalence rate in the country stood at 18.5 per cent of the entire population while the incidence rate was at 1.35 per cent.

He indicated that the total number of people living with HIV/AIDS stood at 370 000 with 8 500 people getting infected annually, which he said was an improvement from 13 5000 in 2010.

Moreover, Mr Selato revealed that death from HIV/AIDS had normalised since 2010 while consumption of HIV/AIDS related services stood at 91 per cent.

He said government had consistently made investments into availing treatment for people affected by HIV/AIDS, and thus encouraged people to take advantage of such programmes so that lives were not lost unnecessarily.

He said Prevention of Mother to Child Treatment (PMTCT) services were currently doing well, having recorded a 2.1 per cent reduction in transmission of HIV/AIDS from 13 per cent in 2013, something he said was commendable. ENDS