Africa-Press – Botswana. Government has been implored to double its commitment to implement ambitious and innovative plan to save lives.
The call was made by World Health Organisation (WHO) country representative, Dr Josephine Namboze, during the World Malaria Day commemoration in Shorobe on Friday.
While congratulating Botswana for achievements in the last five years, Dr Namboze said the country still had unnecessary malaria deaths.
The country, she said, should ensure that everyone had access to quality and affordable Malaria services they needed, adding that a more granular understanding was required on barriers preventing people to access treatment services.
To achieve that, she said, government might need to mobilise more resources and technical capacities at domestic and international levels as well as build effective partnerships and multi-sectoral mechanisms to help strengthen preventive measures and improve coverage of Malaria management services.
“To get us started in the development and implementation of the accelerated and robust plan towards elimination targets for Botswana, as WHO we have brought in a team of Malaria experts from all the three levels of the organisation (country, regional, and headquarters) because we can together meet our 2025 Malaria elimination targets,” she said.
Dr Namboze assured the Ministry of Health of WHO support for realising the dream of achieving and delivering zero Malaria in Botswana.
Malaria, she said, was one of the longest public health challenges in human history, citing that the disease was once endemic across the world, but some countries were now free of Malaria.
Therefore, Botswana could also do more to save lives each year from sickness and death by following novel progress towards the disease’s elimination.
In 2021 alone, Dr Namboze revealed that Malaria deaths stood at 619 000 despite the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, compared to about 625 000 in 2020 with approximately 96 per cent in Africa.
“This is the appropriate time for us to take stock of Malaria’s devastating impact on people’s lives and economic development in this region and it is important to note that concerted efforts yield positive results as echoed by the theme,” she added.
The region, she said, was the hardest hit by the deadly disease partly because many people had no access to preventive and curative interventions, noting that to reverse the trends and accelerate progress, countries must rethink and revitalise their strategies by investing, innovating, and implementing smartly.
For her part, primary health care senior consultant in the Ministry of Health, Dr Malebogo Kebabonye pointed out that the ministry recognised Malaria as a public threat and called all to play their role to save lives.
The theme: Time to Deliver Zero Malaria: Invest, Innovate, Implement, she said emphasised the importance of taking action timely in investing in Malaria programmes.
This, she said would help motivate for bold investments in Malaria control and elimination to bridge critical funding gaps and accelerate progress.
Dr Kebabonye further acknowledged that the country had made incredible progress towards Malaria elimination in the last decade and encouraged all to stay on course.
“We cannot afford to slow down when Malaria still remains a threat to the lives of our people. So far, we have managed to reduce Malaria disease prevalence by 40 per cent, which is a great achievement,” she said.
She appreciated that to date, WHO had awarded certificates to 42 countries for having successfully eliminated Malaria.
Dr Kebabonye noted that the greatest challenges to eliminate Malaria were low community response, inadequate ownership and the ultimate low uptake of Malaria elimination interventions.
She cited Ngami DHMT as one of the districts with low uptake on Malaria elimination interventions and urged the community to change their mind-set.
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