09 Mar 2014

Minister of Infrastructure, Science and Technology, Mr Johnny Swartz says the 2014 Month of Youth Against AIDS (MYAA) campaign will focus on the prevention of new infection of HIV/AIDS.

Mr Swartz said at the launch of MYAA in Ghanzi on Thursday (March 6) that the campaign would focus on reducing the risk of HIV transmission through changes in sexual behavior. He said it could be achieved by addressing underlying structural issues such as social norms and poverty as well as reducing the risk of bio-medical transmission.

He said the aim was to provide behavior change intervention and communication on HIV/AIDS issues. The latest research, Mr Swartz said showed that there had been a slow down on infection rates among the different age groups; which he said needed to be maintained.

He highlighted that government’s efforts of addressing the HIV/AIDS epidemic were shown in the ARV and PMTCT programs. He noted that both programmes exceeded 80 perccent and amongst the highest in the world.

However, Mr Swartz said despite all these success efforts in addressing the epidemic in Botswana, the prevalence rate was still high at 16.9 percent while incidence rate was estimated at 2.47 percent. He raised concern at these numbers as they were very alarming saying government was committed to have a Zero new infection by 2016 and that was only two years from now.

“Government of Botswana has over the years invested in training and developing young people.” Thus, Mr Swartz said if these young people fall prey to the HIV/AIDS pandemic then government would have lost dismally in its efforts to develop the country.

He noted that his ministry is among those that have a highly mobile population. He said it was home to a large number of engineers, other professionals mostly young and labourers who were scarcely available in the country.

Min Swartz said being a mobile population has its own challenges which need people who were disciplined and could restrain themselves from any behavior that could expose them to HIV/AIDS.

Therefore he said it was with such notion that his ministry has taken a deliberate decision to hold an annual Youth Retreat where young people within the ministry were afforded a chance to give suggestions, recommendations and feedback on all programs, developments and issues that were running across the ministry and its departments.

The launch of MYAA this year is held under the theme “Zero New Infections, Zero Discrimination. Zero AIDS related Deaths.” Ends