In a significant stride to combat Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD’s), Katlego Kabotho, has written a book titled, ‘Healthy Warriors! Conquering NCDS’ which is aimed at sensitising children about the NCD’s.
During the book launch this week, Kabotho who is the founder and director of Maranyane Medical Lab, stated it serves as a torch of hope for children in the Diaspora for them to finally acquire knowledge about such conditions. Kabotho stated the children in rural settlements are always overlooked and wanted to break the cycle. “The vision actually started because of the people around me as they made me realise that I very much like to engage with children, which made me go to the library on Saturdays to go and teach children about the NCD’s though crossword puzzles in a very basic manner,” she said.
She added that because of being able to teach children in the library, she wondered about children that are disadvantaged and do not have the opportunity and wanted to do something for them. “Because of this I realised that these children like to learn about the NCDs, and they would even go to the extent of telling me stories so I wondered about the child in Ramatlabama, Charleshill and Mamuno about how they can also benefit from the information I’m sharing with children in the library,” Kabotho said.
Kabotho highlighted that this presented her a chance to tap into the niche and scribe a book about the NCDs so that other children in the Diaspora can benefit from the knowledge she has to offer. “That is when I decided to pin this book and not just use it as a motivation but use all the professionalism experience, I have in my career so that is when I started and got to meet the publishers and took this journey,” revealed Kabotho She said the book is structured in a way that it is easy for children of all ages even tender ones so that they can be able to dissect the information in the book.
Kabotho implored all the relevant stakeholders to purchase the book as it might be the right tool to combat NCDs from a young age and pointed out that World Health Organization (WHO) has raised concerns about NCD’s. “This is the kind of information that our children in Botswana needs to be exposed to at an early age, if you work in a school, work with kids or you are from the Ministry of Education, this is the right book for you,” Kabotho said.
