29 May 2022

Ngami District Health Management Team has registered 364 patients for the new Chronic medicine dispensing programme. To ease unavailability of drugs in health facilities government partnered with citizen-owned pharmacies for them to dispense drugs for chronic illnesses such as hypertension, diabetics, mental diseases, asthma and epilepsy among others. 

Addressing Maun Administrative Authority Sub Council on Wednesday Ngami DHMT Coordinator Dr Sandra Maripe-Ebutswe said those in the waiting list were 251 females and 113 were males. She said 292 of the patients were taking medications for hypertension and other cardio vascular related diseases while 142 were diabetics. 

Dr Maripe-Ebutswe explained that the shortage in government facilities was owing to the fact pharmaceutical companies were overwhelmed over the past few years as the world fought to contain the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in shortage of drugs for many countries. 

Explaining the delays in effecting the system, Dr Maripe said the programme was administered by Botswana Public Officers medical Aid Scheme which first had to register all the patients from around the country benefitting through the programme. She said upon someone being approved, they would be issued with a medical card which they would need to produce to get drugs from partnering pharmacies. 

She acknowledged that patients in villages and settlements in the North West District would still face travel challenges as they would need to come to Maun, where pharmacies were located. 

Dr Maripe-Ebutswe welcomed the suggestions by councillors that Ngami DHMT should have a centralised system that can tell which drugs are available and where. The councillors opined this would help to expedite the process of drug collection in clinics. 

She also welcomed suggestions that that the DHMT should put in place a call centre for patients to establish where they could find their medications to avoid travelling long distances only to be told that their drugs were unavailable. 

Dr Maripe-Ebutswe reported that there were 60 cases of malaria were recorded this year with one fatality. 

She said in order for the district to achieve total eradication of malaria, a 100 percent target of indoor residual spraying should be achieved. 

She said in for the 2021/2022 spray cycle only 57 percent of houses were sprayed due to the fact that some people were never home while some refused to have their houses sprayed. ends