Test For Diseases Early � Mompati

Pini Bothoko | Monday August 31, 2015 15:54

Riverside Hospital’s Managing Director, Dr Kgosidialwa Mompati said this when giving a keynote address at a health fair at the village.

The fair was held under the theme, ‘Partnerships towards health communities with Zero new HIV infections,’ and was organised by the greater Francistown Health District (FHD) in collaboration with Tonota Multi-Sector AIDS Committee (DMSAC).

Mompati said many often people detected health problems in their late stages when they (health problems) were already difficult to manage.

He said high morbidity and mortality among the general public was a result of either poor management, counselling and late detection of diseases.                                                          Chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, arthritis to mention a few were the leading causes of disability and death, hence need to be detected on time. He challenged the village community to join hands and work together with the Ministry of Health and its donor partners because the ministry alone could not fight HIV/AIDS.

Mompati said ever since the first case of HIV in Botswana was detected in 1985 efforts have been put in place to curb the burden of the pandemic.

Strategies have been put in place to prevent the spread of the virus as well as to prevent deaths of those who are already infected through multi-sectoral approach interventions.

He said the fourth Botswana AIDS impact survey revealed that people who were HIV positive were living longer ever since the introduction of ARVs.

He however raised concern about the more than 10, 000 new infections that were registered in Botswana every year.

Meanwhile, NACA’s Principal Information Education Communication Officer, Victor Thanke said they spent a lot of money to fight HIV/AIDS but there was no improvement because people were not committed to fighting the disease spread.

Thanke said NACA introduced Communities Acting Together to Fight HIV/AIDS programme to involve everyone to curb the spread of the disease.