Botswana builds Children�s Cancer and Haematology Centre
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Monday February 27, 2017 17:11
The project is spearheaded by the Ministry of Health and Wellness in collaboration with the Baylor COE Trust, Baylor College of Medicine Internal Paediatric AIDS Initiative, Texas Children’s Hospital and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation.
“The centre, which will be constructed on this very ground, will make Gaborone both a national and regional hub for paediatric oncology, training, research and care using the centre of excellence model that we have come to know so well. This project represents a critical expansion of our health service delivery and a welcome development not only for Botswana but also for our region,” he said. The President said young local doctors, scientists and other health professionals would be trained and capacitated in a state-of-the-art facility by skilled staff.
He pointed out that children with cancer and other blood diseases would have access to high quality care by a team of experts, which would lead to survival rates equivalent or even better than those in high-income countries.
“In the health sector, we saw ourselves recording significant milestones from a rudimentary system providing the most basic care to relatively sophisticated tertiary specialised care.
Along the way, we were challenged by serious events such as the HIV and AIDS epidemic, which tested our resolve to the core but we persevered and prevailed over it,” he said.
For her part, the Minister of Health and Wellness Dorcas Makgato said the first entry of Baylor College of Medicine into Botswana was through the Baylor International Pediatrics AIDS Initiative in 1999.
She noted that within a short period of time, the collaboration gave birth to the Botswana-Baylor Children’s Clinical Centre of Excellence (COE) in 2003 with funding from the Bristol Myers Squibb Secure the Future programme.
“Working in partnership with the ministry, the COE currently provides comprehensive care for over 3,400 children in Gaborone and through its decentralised outreach sites throughout the country. Over the years, it helped transform the pediatric HIV landscape in Botswana, through training research and other capacity building activities,” she said.
She added that childhood cancers in sub Saharan Africa were increasing and therefore the observed increase could be attributed in part to the high HIV prevalence in the region.
Makgato said because of lack of trained healthcare professionals and infrastructure, especially in resource constrained setting, about 80% of children presenting with cancer currently do not survive resulting in approximately 40,000 childhood cancer deaths each year including Botswana. According to a cancer survivor, Ntshoowa Abraham, she was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma in January at Lincoln Nebraska while on exchange program in the United States in 2015. The 21-year-old Bachelor of Science in Soil and Water Conservation Engineering at Botswana University of Agriculture and Natural Resources said what started as a knee pain was confirmed to be cancer.
“That was the most terrible and devastating news I have ever heard. I flew back home to start treatment. My first dose of chemotherapy was just fine, two to three weeks after treatment my hair started falling off. I was not ready for such a big change,” she said.
However, she pointed out that after completing chemotherapy in 2016, her life normalised.