Botswana News

Gaborone, Botswana - 18-22 March 2019: The Ministry of Health and Wellness convened tobacco control stakeholders in Gaborone to develop a first ever national multi-sectoral tobacco control strategy. The week long workshop brought together stakeholders from both within and outside of government. Some of the key stakeholders included Ministries of trade, local government, basic education, youth and culture, the police, Botswana Unified Revenue Services and NGOs such as Anti-tobacco network, Botswana Substance Abuse Network (BOSAsnet), Humana People to People and Skygirls.

Gaborone, Botswana - 1 March 2019: The Ministry of Health and Wellness, through support from WHO, carried a joint activity from 25th February to 1st March 2019, on the 2nd mass drug administration of (MDA) of Albendazole for 5-14 years school going children and booster vaccination on Diphtheria/Tetanus (DT) and oral polio for standard 1 and Tetanus Toxoid (TT) for standard 7 pupils. The objective of the activity was to deworm children and cut transmission cycle of Soil Helimenthes. Basic school health program activities were jointly conducted.

Gaborone, Botswana - 1 March 2019: : The Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW) in Botswana and the World Health Organization (WHO) convened partners and stakeholders, from 25th February to 1st March 2019, to conduct a national training on malaria elimination. 

The training was facilitated by a WHO technical team from HQ/Global Malaria Programme in HQ, WHO/AFRO, IST/ESA, Ethiopia Country Office and WCO. Financial support from MONACO enabled WHO to successfully provide technical support towards this malaria elimination training

Gaborone, Botswana - 8 March 2019: The Botswana WCO joined the rest of the world to commemorate the International Women’s Day on the 8th March 2019 as part of its commitment to end all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls.

Gaborone, Botswana - 19 February 2019: The Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW) requested for technical support from WHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS and CDC to review data processes and assist the country in determining the best modalities for data quality improvement and priority actions for the country to progress toward the path to elimination.

The Government of Botswana has demonstrated commitment to accelerate malaria and other vector borne disease (VBD) elimination. WHO supported the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHW) to develop a draft Integrated Vector Management (IVM) strategic plan 2019-2023. This strategic document is intended to facilitate better planning and implementation of vector control aiming at malaria and other VBDs elimination in the country.

Gaborone, BOTSWANA - 27th November 2018: The Ministry of Health and Wellness (MoHw) with support from the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with several institutional partners has commenced the generation of the 4th round of, and to institutionalize the National Health Accounts (NHA) in Botswana. The NHA is a framework for measuring total national health expenditures including public, private, and donors. It provides key indicators that are used to diagnose the ‘financial health’ of the health system.

Gaborone, Botswana - 29 October 2018: Botswana has been experiencing an outbreak of diarrhoea mainly affecting children below five years of age since the beginning of September 2018. The diarrhoea outbreak started in the central part of the country and then spread to other districts. At the peak of the outbreak, 18 of the 27 districts in Botswana reached epidemic level. The outbreak was detected through analysis of routine surveillance data. Laboratory investigations attributed the cause of the outbreak to rotavirus.

Gaborone, Botswana - 24 August 2018: Botswana conducted an integrated review of the Reproductive, Maternal, Neonatal, Child and Adolescent Health and Nutrition (RMNCAH-N) in 2015.  The review was conducted when a number of policy and strategic plans documents for most the RMNCAH-N progress were coming to an end including that of adolescent health.  The results of the review and other program specific evaluations revealed a number of gaps, for example, insufficient number of health workers competent on ASRH programs; limited operating hours with facilities closing

Gaborone, Botswana - 20 July 2018: Botswana government recently hosted a Regional expert consultative meeting in Phakalane Hotel, Gaborone. The overall objective of this meeting was to provide technical guidance and support meeting for 10 low Leprosy burden countries to design and implement a standardized and efficient approach for preventing and detecting leprosy in the low-burden context. The participating countries were Botswana, Eritrea, Lesotho, Mauritius, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe and Gambia.