30 Mar 2023

The Community Home Based Care (CHBC) programme is still functional and has continued to produce the expected results as per its mandate.

This was said by the Assistant Minister of Health Mr Sethomo Lelatisitswe in response to a question in Parliament on Tuesday.

“The programme is still effective with an extended mandate, initially it was designed for HIV/AIDS patients. 

Following its success, in 2003 the mandate was expanded to accommodate other patients who need home based care such as patients with non-communicable diseases e.g stroke patients, heart failure, kidney failure, victims of road accidents and an increasing number of terminal cancer patients,” he said. Mr Lelatisitswe said other services accessed from the ministry included food basket, transport and rent allowances.

He highlighted that at national level the programme has three permanent staff and one temporary officer for coordination, adding that each health district has a community home-based care coordinator, with 27 permanent staff, while each facility has a focal person who links with the coordinator.

“The programme also works with 2 812 (2022/23) community lay volunteers country wide, with the number fluctuating depending on the increase or decline of clients/patients.

Mr Lelatisitswe said the 2022/23 annual budget for the programme stood at P25 516 050 with P11million as volunteers’ allowances, with each one of them being paid P302,80 as transport allowance monthly for working three days in a week for 3 hours per day.

“At times there are delays with payments as per contract because of shortages of paying officers and the proposed long term solution being explored is the use of pula card which was introduced by the Ministry of Finance,” said Mr Lelatisitswe.He told the House that the programme was last reviewed in May 2019, and major findings were the existence of multi-sectoral and multidisciplinary coordinating structures at district level, community involvement and participation amongst others while the challenges were the inconsistency in the provision of supplies due to supply chain issues. 

Furthermore, he said some challenges included the inadequate supervision and mentoring of volunteers due to shortage of staff. 

In addition, he said recycling and over representation of individuals in multiplestructures like Ipelegeng and VDC (double dipping) were some of the challenges.  The Maun East legislator, Mr Goretetse Kekgonegile had asked the minister to brief Parliament on the functioning of the Home Based Care programme and to state if the program was effective and still within its original mandate.

Mr Kekgonegile also wanted to know the number of staff manning the programme country wide, the num Ministry to intensify programmes roll-out ber of permanent, temporary and volunteers within the programme, its total budget and if volunteers were paid as per contract.  

Furthermore, he enquired as to when the CHBC was last reviewed and what the major findings were. ENDS