Review into �anti-gay laws� due out
Tefo Pheage | Thursday August 18, 2016 14:34
The assessment, termed a ‘Legal Environment Impact Survey’ aims to assess and reduce legal barriers towards accessing health care services, including changing provider attitudes towards the target Most At Risk Persons (MARPs).
The review comes as studies show that the fight against HIV/AIDS is ineffective among members of the gay community, who say they are largely excluded or stigmatised by the existing policies and attitudes.
Blessed Monyatsi, ACHAP’s head of new projects, told Mmegi that the assessment would inform them of the existing legal barriers in terms of what laws to review and what laws to add.
“Thereafter we will do advocacy work and campaigns by raising awareness in Parliament and to other players.
We will not go the litigation route but continuous engagement of the authorities to look into the prohibitive and regressive policies and laws,” he said.
The legal barriers assessment, he said, was due to have ended last month but was held up by a few challenges.
“Our assessment will now be complete by December 2016 and we will take everything from there,” he said.
Monyatsi, a social development, health and administration expert, said the organisations would also educate health workers and law enforcers who are said to be ill-treating and harassing MARPs whenever they encounter them.
“Police officers and health officers still need to be educated and trained and they are our target as well,” he said.
Meanwhile Botswana recently received $32 million from Global Fund to fight HIV, TB and malaria. The grant‘s goals are to prevent HIV new infections by 2018 and reduce morbidity, mortality, psychosocial and the economic impact associated with Tuberculosis by 2018.
The grant was given looking at the fact that while Botswana is an upper-middle-income country, the diseases remain a big concern. Botswana, which has an HIV prevalence of about 18 percent, is however praised for having made remarkable progress against HIV, which was at its peak a decade ago.
In a statement, Global Fund said the country’s sustained political will has ensured strong domestic investments in HIV programmes. With tuberculosis responsible for more than 10 percent of all hospital admissions and more than five percent of outpatient visits, the funding is timely.
“The Global Fund’s investments in TB aim to increase treatment success rate and have a particular focus on health workers, current TB patients and people living with HIV.
The support seeks to scale up community TB care across the country, strengthen TB/HIV collaborative activities and increase monitoring and evaluation at all levels.
“The investments also aim to support Botswana to cut down on new HIV infections through HIV prevention measures,” the statement reads.