Speaking at the Botswana Medical Aid (BOMAID) stakeholder engagement meeting in Maun on Wednesday, Maripe noted that the district is struggling with a high rise of diseases such as the recent outbreak of diarrhoea on children under five years, which has unfortunately already claimed lives. Of the 622 cases recorded, 485 had diarrhoea without dehydration, 121 with dehydration and 16 with blood stained stools. She added that in the past three months, a total of 19 deaths were recorded, and that nine out of these were brought in dead. As a result, Maripe said they were left with no choice but to seek the intervention of the district leadership whereupon the District Commissioner’s office, Tribal Administration and Tawana Land Board offered to lend them vehicles to do diarrhoea disease response and outreaches. The Department of Environmental Health also stepped in with water sampling at hard hit areas within the district. She called for extra vigilance and calm amongst residents to allow them time to contain the disease and positively do away with it.
The rising incidences of malaria cases, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, diabetes, hypertension, maternal deaths, among others, are also said to have become a common occurrence, a sad development which has compelled the DHMT to be on their toes day in and day out so as to control the diseases as a prevention measure. She noted also that teams are on the ground doing indoor residual spraying, even though they are often times faced with challenges especially in instances whereby house owners are unavailable, reluctant or not cooperative at all. “We were able to score 60% of spraying in the past year. Our wish has always been that people should be cooperative enough to allow for this preventive exercise to succeed. We highly suspect intervention fatigue, but we will increase outreach. She highlighted that they have had engagements with village development committees, the Botswana Police and so forth so that they help facilitate prevention. Recently, also, she said the DHMT went to brief various sectors of the district leadership who in turn visited the hospital to appreciate the current situation.
