21 Oct 2023

 The United States supports Botswana’s vision towards achieving and sustaining near-universal prevention and treatment coverage of HIV and AIDS.

US ambassador, Mr Howard Van Vranken said this during the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Botswana 20th anniversary celebration in Gaborone on Friday.

“For 20 years, PEPFAR has supported the government of Botswana through US government agencies, including the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Peace Corps and US Agency for International Development (USAID),” he said.

He said it was through this robust US-Botswana partnership and with the hard work of implementing partner organisations that many lives were saved and Botswana also transformed its HIV and AIDS response.
“Over the past two decades, PEPFAR has played a critical role in building the health architecture of partner nations including Botswana.  PEPFAR has trained medical personnel, created prevention programs, provided broad-use diagnostic equipment as well as personal protective equipment (PPE) and established systems to trace infections,” he said.

Mr Van Vranken said PEPFAR played a critical role in building the health architecture of partner nations, including Botswana, adding that it also trained medical personnel, created prevention programs, provided broad-use diagnostic equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE).

 These efforts, he said, had helped many countries to better respond to other global health crises such as COVID-19.

 Furthermore, the Ministry of Health deputy permanent secretary, Mr Moses Keetile, said government remained steadfast in obtaining the health aspirations of Vision 2036, which highlights among other things, the attainment of improved health care system for the betterment of the citizenry.

To that end, Mr Keetile   applauded the partnership between the two countries saying it played an important role in improving Botswana’s health sector.

“Government will forever be grateful to the US for its positive contribution towards the country’s health sector particularly on matters pertaining to HIV and AIDS,” Mr Keetile said.

He applauded PEPFAR for supporting Botswana’s the efforts of Botswana’s through the Ministry of Health (MoH) in the elimination of mother-to-child HIV transmission (MTCT) national strategies.

He said it was through such efforts that the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2021 awarded Botswana ‘Silver Tier’ status for lowering the MTCT rate to less than five percent and providing prenatal care and antiretroviral therapy (ART) to more than 90 per cent of pregnant women living with HIV.  

Mr Keetile indicated that PEPFAR was now supporting the MoH to achieve WHO ‘Gold Tier’ certification, which required maintaining MTCT at less than five per cent and increasing the provision of prenatal care and anti-retroviral treatment to more than 95 per cent of pregnant women.BOPA