Health ministry reserves COVID-19 funds
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Monday March 14, 2022 06:00
Presenting his ministry’s recurrent and development budget proposal recently, Dikoloti told Parliament that there is progress so far in preventing the spread of COVID-19 infections.
“Successful delivery of vaccines were made possible following the decision taken by the Government of Botswana to have joint global efforts that were geared towards accelerating the deployment of the COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX and AVATT facilities,” he said.
“Moreover, procurement of some vaccines was done through bilateral agreements with countries and/or manufacturers while some were donated by development partners and some countries through their embassies.”
Furthermore, he pointed out that in September 2021, a supplementary budget amounting to P1.1 billion was allocated to his ministry. Dikoloti added that supplementary provision of P560 million was approved in December 2021 for the principal purpose of procuring Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs), booster vaccines and oxygen concentrators to curb the spread of COVID-19 variants.
He said so far, a total amount of P1.1 billion was expended on COVID-19 related expenses. Still, on the issues of the pandemic, Dikoloti said his ministry had developed and implemented the National Deployment and Vaccination Plan (NDVP) in March 2021.
According to Dikoloti, the implementation of the vaccination programme was started through an age-based approach.
“This initially categorised the population into three phases. The first phase targeted those above 55 years of age, Phase 2 included those between 30 to 54 years of age while Phase 3 comprised those from 18 to 29 years of age. The fourth phase, which commenced in January 2022 targeted children from the age of 12 to 17 years,” he said.
Meanwhile, the minister told Parliament that as part of the Reset Agenda pillar on digitalisation, his ministry has embarked on a Digitalisation of Health Services programme.
“Through this programme and implementation of the e-Health Strategy (2020-2024), my ministry will expedite a digital transformation of health services. The ministry has recently developed an electronic Digitalisation Maturity Assessment (DMA) and monitoring tool that provides the ministry with the dashboards that monitor our digitalisation maturity level,” he said.
“The DMA tool will assist us to continuously monitor the implementation and uptake of digitalisation. In addition, the development of the Centralised Electronic Medical Record (EMR) commenced in December 2021 and a rollout of the TB module will start in April 2022,” he said.
He said the centralised EMR will replace the current standalone system running at more than 400 clinics and health posts by March 2023. The minister said he is also upgrading the current centralised EMR Integrated Patient Management System (IPMS) running at all the hospitals and laboratories into a web-based, patient-facing EMR by 2024. He said ultimately, access to health information by patients, healthcare professionals and management will improve significantly.
In addition, he said his ministry is working on the development of the Botswana e-Health Enterprise Architecture (BEEA) to enable the linkage of Health Systems.
He continued, “Currently, my ministry is working on the interfacing of the centralised EMRs with Births & Deaths Register System (BDRS) and Omang System to be completed by March 2023.”
On other issues of malaria disease, the minister said Botswana continues to record a significant reduction of malaria cases and has therefore maintained an incidence rate of less than 1/1,000 population since 2011.
However, he said his ministry continues to face challenges which include the sporadic nature of the disease, high burden of malaria in non-endemic areas such as Kweneng, South East and Mabutsane hence making it difficult to fully eliminate the disease.
“My ministry will continue to investigate all cases in these areas and further implement initiatives such as Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS); the distribution of Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets; Strengthened Case management; Surveillance and Enhanced Community Participation to eliminate malaria,” he said.
In addition, he said they will continuously strengthen cross-border collaborations and surveillance with neighbouring countries to minimise the importation of malaria cases from high endemic areas.
He said the local communities are included as partners/stakeholders in the implementation of these interventions through the Community Acting Together to Eliminate Malaria model. Adding that these efforts are in line with the SADC Elimination 8 bloc, and the World Health Organisation –Global Malaria Programme E2025 Initiative.