Africa-Press – Botswana. Sowa Town catchment clinic has of late been recording a high number of malnutrition cases.
Addressing a full council session recently, Sowa Town Mayor, Mr Oliphant Mfa highlighted that the total prevalence of malnutrition for the clinic stood at 3.9 per cent, which is higher than the national target of 2.9 per cent.
He therefore called for responsibility from parents to see to it that they feed children, adding that some children lacked nutrients due to negligence of the parents or caregivers.
He noted that although the prevalence rate of 3.9 per cent was too high, the district did not qualify to be allocated rations for direct feeding, which is only provided when the prevalence stands at 10 per cent.
Nevertheless, Mr Mfa disclosed that all the malnourished children were seen by a dietician on monthly basis at the clinic and a paediatrician when need arose.
He explained that drug availability at the health facility stood at 84.44 per cent on vital drugs while on essential and necessary ones were at 85.6 and 52.9 per cent respectively.
He indicated that in comparison to the previous quarter, this accounted for a slight decrease most significantly on the necessary drugs availability, which had decreased by almost 16 per cent.
However, Mr Mfa assured the community that there was no need for alarm as on overall the clinic was fairing well in terms of drug availability, adding that the facility continued to source out of stock commodities from other facilities.
“Let us put more emphasis on changing of lifestyle to avoid non-communicable diseases, which are now at the centre-stage of taking lives,” he said.
He stated that apart from the situation of malnutrition, the town had also been struggling with continued high rates of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI’s) and that on February 17 Sowa Men Sector held an STI campaign in the form of a soccer tournament to spread awareness on the effects of STI’s.
He said such an effort was commendable and showed that communities needed to work together towards improved health and lifestyle choices.
He disclosed that in an effort to improve public service delivery, government had introduced Community Based Monitoring (CBM) which was piloted at district level in 2017 and had now been rolled out to towns.
He stated that two surveys had already been conducted and the third one, which would be done this year, would include Sowa Town.
“CBM is a tool for the community to give us feedback and identify gaps in public service delivery,” he said.
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