11 Nov 2013

Botswana is among African countries that are highly affected by diabetes, clinical services deputy director in the Ministry of Health, Mr John Botsang has said.

Mr Botsang said this at the commemoration of World Diabetes Day at Game City in Gaborone on November 9. Mr Botsang said in Botswana, there were 96 000 people living with diabetes in the year 2012, giving the country the national prevalence of 8.25 per cent, against 4.3 per cent in the rest of Africa. 

He said the national prevalence for Botswana was nearly twice that of the continent hence the country being among the top five highly affected countries in Africa. Mr Botsang indicated that diabetes was a developmental disease, adding urbanisation and the accompanying changes in lifestyle were the main drivers of the epidemic in addition to changes in population structure where more people are living longer. 

He said as high middle-income developing country, Botswana has witnessed a rapid increase in the urbanisation and the change in the lifestyle of the people in the last two decades.  That, he added, gave rise to sedentary lifestyle and increased consumption of fatty diet, which subsequently increased the prevalence of obesity and the risk factors for diabetes in Botswana. 

Furthermore, he said in response to the emerging pandemic, Botswana had become party to the United Nation Summit on Non-Communicable diseases in September 2011, thereby committing to address the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases.

He added that the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with other stakeholders like the Diabetes Association of Botswana, were at the forefront in the fight against diabetes. He noted that the ministry together with its partners has, last year during the world Diabetes Day alone, screened approximately 800 people in Gaborone.

He said that to ensure that those who already have diabetes get state of the art world class care, the ministry has also in 2011, established Diabetes Centres of Excellence in Gaborone and Francistown. 

These centres, he said,are manned by highly trained staff including specialist doctors in diabetes and they offer state of the art care for all diabetes patients free of charge. 

Diabetes Association of Botswana chairperson, Dr Dipesalema Joel, said the World Diabetes Day was set aside by the International Diabetes Federation and the World Health Organisation (WHO) every year in November 14, to commemorate diabetes as a way to increase public awareness of the disease. 

Thus, he encouraged Batswana to make use of free screening services to know about their health. 

Among the gathering were experts from the Institute of Health Sciences, the University Of Botswana School Of Medicine and the Ministry of Health who advised the public on health issues.

This year is the final year of a five-year campaign which carried a slogan ‘Diabetes: Protect our future.’ It supports the need for provision of simple factual information on prevention and control of diabetes.

Meanwhile, the Botswana Public Service Medical Aid Scheme donated  P30 000 to the Diabetes Association of Botswana.Ends