09 Sep 2019

Government recognises and acknowledges the contribution of leaders towards nation building, says the deputy Mayor of Francistown, Mr Godisang Radisigo.

Giving a keynote address during the National Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) and HIV Consultative Pitso recently, Mr Radisigo said generating dialogue with community leaders, religious leaders, professionals, Civil Society Organization and government leadership on pertinent issues related to HIV and NCDs was important.

He said that the Pitso brought together custodians of Setswana culture, morality, medical ethics and legislatives who provided valuable guidance to National response to HIV and NCDs.

Mr Radisigo noted that the Pitso held under the theme: Leverage on Community Structures to Tackle NCDs and HIV, aimed to create dialogue with key stakeholders on priorities set out in the 3rd National Strategic Framework for HIV and AIDS, including the Strategy for Non-Communicable Diseases.

“This Pitso will also examine district-specification plans to address HIV and NCDs epidemics, so as to operationalise the two strategies launched by the State President on June 14, this year at Gaborone,” he said.

The deputy mayor also reiterated that the event came in the wake of expansion of National AIDS and Health Promotion Agency’s (NAHPA) mandated to encompass NCDs so that they could benefit from the model that NAHPA had successfully used over the years in controlling the spread of HIV.

Mr Radisigo said bringing HIV and NCDs together under NAHPA had also been largely influenced by the observation that individuals infected and living with HIV were increasingly becoming co-infected with NCDs.

He observed that HIV epidemic remained a serious health threat and a critical development issue.

According to results of Botswana AIDS impact Survey IV, it is estimated that 18.5 per cent, which translates to 370 000 of the general population are living with HIV, he added.

The number of the new infections, he said, was also high at approximately 8 500 and another disturbing factor, was the new infections among Adolescent, Girls and Young Women (AGYW) which is 4 600 new infections per year and 61 new infections per week.

He also noted that the Behavioural, Biological Surveillance Study of 2017 had revealed that HIV prevalence among key population was very high among all groups, sex workers, Men who Have Sex with Men and Transgender.

He highlighted that Key populations were a segment of the population but interacted with the general population hence prevention programmes needed to be broader, open minded and comprehensive.

On other issues, Mr Radisigo said the major contributing factors to HIV epidemic were behavioural issues that included early sexual debut, inconsistent condom use, intergenerational sex, multiple concurrent partnerships, transactional sex and Gender Based Violence.

He said that over the years, Botswana had experienced escalation of the two epidemics of HIV and NCDs with common NCDs being diabetes, cardio-vascular diseases, hypertension and cancers.

He added that globally NCDs were the leading cause of deaths claiming 38 million lives per year more than HIV, TB and Malaria combined.

He said ‘according to the NCDs risk factor survey of 2014, more than 30.6 per cent of Batswana are overweight and obese, 18 per cent smoke, 20 per cent do not engage in physical activity while 95 per cent do not eat fruits and vegetables adequately.’

“In Botswana, NCDs were estimated to account for 46 per cent of deaths in 2016 and among these deaths, 18 per cent were due to cardiovascular diseases, 7 per cent due to cancer and 4 per cent due to chronic respiratory diseases whilst 6 per cent were due to diabetes,” he said.

Mr Radisigo however said it was against this backdrop that they encouraged people to actively participate with strong stewardship from the community as most of the risk factors were modifiable and could be prevented. Ends