30 Jun 2023

The annual Walk for Life campaign, an initiative which aims to raise awareness against Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) will be held from July 5-8 starting from Kanye to Jwaneng covering 80 kilometres over a period of four days.

Deputy permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health, Dr Tshepo Machacha told a press conference on June 27 that the event, which was started by the ministry last year, would be hosted again by the Southern District Health Management Team (DHMT).

“There will be stop overs at all villages that we will go through from Kanye to Jwaneng. The stop overs will offer us an opportunity to meet with residents and educate them about how they can avoid or manage NCDs,” Dr Machacha said.

He added that the ministry had realised that Botswana continued to face a high number of people who died annually from NCDs and many died prematurely because they did not take the necessary precautions to manage the diseases like exercising and healthy eating.

“Recent research has showed us that in Botswana 46 per cent of all deaths are from NCDs. What worries us even more is the fact that most NCDs are preventable and manageable,” he said.

To beat the statistics, Dr Machacha advised people to walk at least 10 000 steps per day, saying that would keep them healthy and at less risk of NCDs.

Dr Machacha thanked the event main sponsors, StorkFort Health and Old Mutual for continuing to support the Ministry of Health’s efforts to keep the country healthy.

He also said they supported the campaign again last year and that showed that they were true corporate citizens who had generously extended their financial and other resources to them so that nothing fell short.

Sharing his perspective about the event, Old Mutual general manager, Mr Daniel Matlhagela said as an organisation that wanted to inspire its customers to be financially fit, they were also promoting overall health and believed that working together as a team would help beat NCDs.

For his part, StorkFort Health chief executive officer, Dr Mogwera Mogalakwe also shared the same sentiments, saying it was beneficial for people to walk for an hour three to four times a week.

Also, he said the imitative was improving quality of life and were happy to be working with Southern DHMT for the second time this year.

He therefore urged more organisations to join the bandwagon and support the initiative, which he said would get more people to walk for health. BOPA