Africa-Press – Botswana. There was low uptake of HIV testing by men in Letlhakane and enrolment for Prevention of Mother To Child Transmission programme in Boteti.
Boteti District Health Management Team coordinator, Ms Tshegofatso Tlotlang said when updating Boteti District Development Committee meeting recently.
Ms Tlotlang said out of a total of 2 359 people tested for HIV in the current quarter, 635 were males while 1 724 were females.
Also, she said in the first quarter, 2 526 tested for HIV, which showed an increase of 167 people and an increase of 0.42 per cent in positivity rate from 1.66 peer cent in the previous quarter.
Continuous engagement with other stakeholders, she said would be made to address low testing in males.
Also, Ms Tlotlang noted that there was a slight increase in the number of Sexually Transmitted Infections in the current quarter, with urethral discharges syndrome at 34 per cent.
STI case load, she said remained at three per cent of total consultation while contact tracing slightly increased from 12 per cent to 15 per cent in the current quarter.
The turnaround time for contact clients to seek medical attention, she said, was five days and there was a reduction in the number of contact slips from 109 to 79 in the current quarter.
She said the aim was to encourage health facilities to improve on contact screening and that would be done through support visits to health facilities by focal persons in the health facilities and public education.
She further said circumcision was not undertaken in the current quarter and the programme experienced shortage of resources such as lack of Safe Male Circumcision (SMC) doctors.
She further said the programme was not allocated any funds and therefore no SMC campaigns were conducted.
“The team’s plan was to engage stakeholders and conduct public education,” she said.
She said there were 10 672 people on ART in the district, 45 were initiated on ART during the quarter under review.
All HIV positive women were enrolled on ART and partner testing rate decreased by 0.5 per cent,” she said
Ms Tlotlang said their main strategy was to intensify prevention education for the HIV negative mothers and adherence to the three months testing schedule for all breastfeeding mothers.
She said they would also create platforms where men could be provided with health education on the importance of HIV testing such as through Men’s pitso.
Ms Tlotlang also said every health facility in the district provided HIV care and all health facilities had ARV prescribers on site providing ARVs.
She further said the total number of Tuberculosis (TB) cases in the current quarter was 25 compared to 33 reported the previous quarter.
She said all cases were pulmonary TB cases, while 28 per cent were extra pulmonary TB cases.
She further said enrolment of TB HIV patients on ARV was 100 per cent while community TB care enrolment stood at 92 per cent and HIV testing was at 96 per cent.
“In the current quarter, 7 047 clients were screened for TB compared to 1 1538 last quarter,” she said.
Community home based care she said had 253 beneficiaries with 105 males and 248 females, noting that the programme enrolled 21 new patients in the current quarter.
She noted that out of the 253 beneficiaries, 38 were HIV positive and were on ART while the rest had various chronic diseases.
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