02 Mar 2022

Government is desirous to provide accessible and friendly health services to the elderly. Health and Wellness minister, Dr Edwin Dikoloti said this Tuesday, when launching the Botswana Healthy and Active Ageing Programme Strategy, which is aimed at addressing health needs of the elderly.

Dr Dikoloti said the strategy would ensure that health systems were aligned to the changing needs of people as they aged. “Accessibility and friendly health facilities to the elderly is a priority for the Ministry of Health and Wellness,” he said.

He maintained no health system should be so rigid as to only focus on the more active and youthful population, to the exclusion of those who had entered the inevitable aging process.

“After all, we will all get old,” he said.

Dr Dikoloti said the strategy was an important document as it provided guidance on how the aged could continue to live healthily and manage any health challenges they were likely to face.

He said social scientists were advising that as people aged, their health needs became more chronic and complex, which affected their ability to access health care services, hence the government’s drive to ensure they had access to services.

“As the ministry, we should always be conscious of our country’s population dynamics and be alive to the realities of the kind of lives that all sections of our population live,” he said.

He added that Botswana’s elderly and aged, who made 8.5 per cent of the population, mainly lived in rural areas.

“Some live alone and often have complicated health challenges like mobility problems, disability, blindness, deafness and also suffer from other chronic diseases,” he said.

Most of the of the elderly, he said, found it difficult to take care of themselves due to among others, challenges of inaccessible health facilities and being unable to take their medication at prescribed times for one reason or another.

The minister said some of the limiting factors included physiological and memory problems that reduced their ability to self-care, and other day-to-day activities.

He said with the support from the World Health Organisation, the ministry conducted a situational analysis of Ageing and Health of older adults in Botswana in April 2019 and some of the findings from the survey, indicated that older people in Botswana suffered from hypertension and had been largely infected and affected by HIV.

He said HIV had infected some at the time they provided care to their ailing children or grandchildren.

Sadly, owing to limited access to health facilities, some of the diseases that they suffered from were either diagnosed late or never detected at all, owing to limited access to health care facilities.

“It is our duty therefore, as a country and ministry charged with the health and wellness of the nation, to ensure that all our elderly people enjoy the advanced health care facilities that their government has invested in,” he said.

For his part the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Kgotla Autlwetse said his ministry had devoted significant resources to ensure delivery of social protection to citizens, including the protection of vulnerable populations such as older adults.

“My ministry provides a total of 125 810 older adults aged 65 and above with a monthly Old Age Pension of P530 and a total of 1011 older adults who are World War II Veterans or their spouses, receive an allowance of P600 per month,” he said.

Mr Autlwetse said a total of 9250 older adults benefitted from the destitution programme whereby they were provided with food baskets, a cash allowance of P300, and decent housing where necessary.

Further, he said, older adults with severe and profound incapacity, received a P450 disability grant every month. Ends