Africa-Press – Botswana. Cash-strapped government faces billions of pula in claims due to medical malpractice and negligence, Parliament has heard.
Answering a question this week, Assistant Minister of Health Lawrence Ookeditse said they have cases, through the Attorney General, demanding an amount exceeding P6.5 billion. He was responding to Member of Parliament (MP) for Kanye West Victor Phologolo who had asked the minister to state the number of malpractice or medical negligence cases the government has been grappling with in the past 15 years. The MP also had also wanted to know how much was paid out to settle claims against the ministry and what interventions were put in place to curb the rising cases. “The ministry is unable to give an accurate amount of money that has been used to settle claims,” Ookeditse said. “However, the ministry through the Attorney General has had cases demanding an amount exceeding P6.5 billion,” Ookeditse said.
The minister revealed that on average the government pays out P150, 000 to P3 million to settle claims depending on the type of case. “The ministry has experienced a number of medicolegal cases and we started tracking medicolegal cases in 2021. We are therefore unable to quantify cases before that,” he added. According to Ookeditse, in 2021 the ministry faced 69 cases, 33 in 2022, 50 in 2023, 60 in 2024 and 41 in 2025 as of July, taking the tally to 253. In a bid to combat the surging malpractice cases, government has moved to adopt interventions that will help tackle the challenge. Such interventions include the establishment of the Medicolegal Unit in 2021 resourced with officers dedicated to responding to the cases. “This unit explores alternative dispute resolution so that the grievances don’t escalate to cases,” Ookeditse revealed.
Additionally, the ministry has embarked on training health care workers on medicolegal issues and upskilling them for different skills mix for effective patient care and improvement of patient outcomes. On the other hand, government has improved feedback mechanisms to service providers to allow for learning from the cases and advocates for settlement out of court, he told Parliament.
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