E-DRUG: Botswana president backs ARV roll-out
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[Botswana is taking a very different route from South Africa in terms of
AIDS treatment. Where the SA government is trying to limit the roll-out of
nevirapine for MTCT, Botswana is already rolling out full triple treatment.
Botswana has had MTCT (with AZT, not NVP) on offer in all health facilities
for 2 years. The problem in Botswana is lack of (trained) health workers,
not lack of political will! Copied as fair use. WB]
http://www.businessday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,1060016-6078-0,00.h
tml
Botswanan Pres backs Aids drug roll out
GABORONE - Botswana President Festus Mogae said Tuesday his country had no
choice but to begin a nationwide program to give Aids medicine to everyone
who needs it.
"We are the most hideously affected country in the world and we had to do
something about it," he said during a news conference with foreign
journalists. "The pandemic is not abating."
An estimated 19% of Botswana's 1.7 million people are infected with HIV.
About 38% of its adults have the virus, the highest infection rate in the
world.
The diamond-rich southern African nation is the first country on the
continent to commit to a widespread program of providing Aids medicine
through its public health system.
The government began rolling out its program earlier this year. Currently,
250 people are receiving Aids medicine from a hospital in the capital,
Gaborone, while another 800 are on a waiting list because of a shortage of
doctors to examine patients and prescribe the medicine.
Aids itself is partly to blame for that problem, its deadly spread killing
many workers and exacerbating Botswana's already serious shortage of
skilled labour, Mogae said.
"We are short of doctors. We are short of nurses. We are short of
pharmacists. We are short of health technicians," he said.
Nonetheless, the government plans to open three more sites to provide the
often costly but potentially lifesaving medicine across the country by
July, giving an estimated 19,000 people the medicine by the end of the
year, Health Minister Joy Phumaphi said.
"We do not believe it is fair to offer people prevention strategies without
offering them treatment and care," she said. Few other African nations
provide any AIDS drugs through their public health systems and those that
do have tiny programmes and little money to expand them.
Botswana has more money than most African countries and is also receiving
some funding for its program from the pharmaceutical company Merck & Co.
and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
In the next 3 to 5 years the government expects to spend a total of 1.2
billion pula (nearly $200-million) on Aids medicine as it continues
expanding the number of sites and the number of people receiving the
medicine, Phumaphi said.
Without Aids drugs, Botswana's work force would continue dying off in
frightening numbers, badly damaging the country, she said.
"The economy stands more to suffer from not having the programme than from
having it," she said.
Sapa-AP
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