17 Jul 2021

Botswana has made significant achievements in the fight against major infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS .

Speaking at a non-communicable diseases investment case inception forum in Botswana on Thursday, Minister of Health and Wellness, Dr Edwin Dikoloti said  this could not have been possible without a strong leadership and political will as well as contribution from other key players including development partners, civil society organizations, Non-Governmental Organizations and others.  

“If we are not careful, however, all these gains could be reversed by the rising burden of non-communicable diseases. We of course know and there is plenty of evidence that non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cancers, cardiovascular diseases and chronic lung diseases are on the rise in Botswana. These invariably pose a tremendous economic burden that can be felt far beyond the health sector,” he said.

Dr Dikoloti said non-communicable diseases were estimated to account for 46 per-cent of all deaths in Botswana.

He said it was in view of the aforementioned that they were presumed to be significant threats to the national health and economic development of Botswana.

Furthermore, he said government alone could not afford to deal with spiraling epidemic, hence the need for all hands to be on the deck.

He said  Botswana had been proactive in tackling non-communicable diseases since they had been included in the high-level documents such as Vision 2036, the National Development Plan 11 and the Ministry of Health and Wellness Strategic Plan of 2017-23, over and above the multi-sectoral strategy for non-communicable diseases 2018-2023.

Dr Dikoloti said in an effort to prioritize non-communicable diseases,government had made a deliberate decision to move the health promotion aspect of them to the National AIDS and Health Promotion Agency (NAHPA).

“We hope that through this transition, lessons learnt during the HIV and AIDS epidemic response will be applied first hand in the fight against non-communicable diseases,” he said.

The minister said Botswana was currently a primary source of funding for non-communicable diseases related health services, contributing 70 per-cent of total non-communicable diseases spending while the private sector and the households contributed the rest.

He said the national budget alone could not manage, hence the urgent need to engage more partners to contribute to resourcing the response to Non-Communicable diseases. Ends