24 May 2022

Botswana has hailed the Swedish government for funding the lifesaving programme of sexual reproductive health rights, HIV and sexual gender based violence.

Speaking in Gaborone yesterday during a knowledge sharing and learning symposium on the scale-up of the services in Botswana, Ministry of Health permanent secretary, Ms Grace Muzila said the programme had been successful in empowering Batswana to exercise their sexual and reproductive rights.

It had also helped the health system to adopt an integrated services delivery approach that would ultimately see more people having access to various health services, she said.

Ms Muzila also acknowledged the role played by UN agencies such as WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF and UNAIDS in ensuring that the programme was a success.

She promised that the ministry would do its part to ensure the programme impacted the lives of people as intended and expand it to the remaining eight District Health Management Teams.

Noting that Botswana still had HIV and gender based violence (GBV) challenges, Ms Muzila said the programme had come in handy for sensitising more people on the issues.

“Many people across the participating districts were not only reached, educated about GBV and sexual reproductive health rights but were also empowered on how they can protect themselves and those around them,”, she stated.

The permanent secretary said the programme had highlighted the importance of an integrated approach to health service delivery.

“We also realised that revitalisation of primary health care was the way to go,” she said adding that the critical lessons learnt would not only help to empower people but also bring health services closer to all.

The COVID-19 pandemic, she said, did not disrupt the vigour and dedication to have the programme succeed.

“In fact, COVID-19 helped us to come up with more innovative measures in which we could continue providing health services to our people in spite of all the restrictions that the pandemic placed on us,” she said.

Ms Muzila said the pandemic forced the ministry to expedite its digitalization project.

She said through different digital platforms, the ministry was able to liaise with health care workers,  facilitating them so that they could continue caring for people during the pandemic.

Accurate and timely information was conveyed to health care workers across the country digitally, she said adding that they were also given appropriate support and guidance which enabled them to successfully implement community based responses to the pandemic and ensured that people had access to critical health services.

For his part, UNFPA representative in Botswana, Mr Innocent Modisaotsile thanked the government of Sweden for demonstrating ‘unquestionable commitment to supporting the SRHR agenda’.

“It will be very remiss of me not to pay special tribute to Sweden for its financial support to advance SRHR to all populations,” he said.

Mr Modisaotsile said Botswana was considered an integration success story because of the successful implementation of the initiative that would lead to achievement of sexual reproductive health rights for all by 2030.

Another speaker, health services deputy permanent secretary, Dr Tshepo Machacha said the symposium enabled sharing of knowledge and lessons learnt since the inception of the ‘2gether 4 SRHR Programme’ in 2017.

Dr Machacha also stressed the importance of collaboration between the ministry and stakeholders in the  scaling up and enhancing of integrated health services provision.

With that, Botswana would be able to contribute to the attainment of all health related sustainable development goals and their targets, he stated.Ends