Africa-Press – Botswana. The question that Francistown South MP, Wynter Mmolotsi, put to the Assistant Minister of Health, Sethomo Lelatisitswe, was a quite simple one: was the recent acute shortage in drugs at government health facilities the cause of a dramatic rise in deaths?
Had the minister carried out any research to ascertain that? Backing that query-assertion with an example from his constituency, the MP said that up to seven people were buried each weekend during the duration of such shortage. However, as Mmolotsi would probably have realised when Lelatisitswe began his answer, the research part was a tactical misstep that enabled the latter to easily weasel out. The answer was that it would be difficult to state with certainty whether any such deaths were a result of the drugs’ shortage because no investigations have yet been carried out. The minister would have had little to no wiggle room if the question had confined itself to whether it was possible that the shortage had occasioned the spate of deaths that the MP alleged.
The minister wouldn’t have been able to equivocate on the issue because in the pre-shortage dispensation, none other than Ministry of Health officials themselves have stated that non-adherence to prescription drugs can cause death. As a matter of fact and on the basis of solid science, health workers at government health facilities routinely tell chronic-disease patients on prescription drugs that non-adherence to drugs causes their medical condition to worsen and that death can be the result. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that non-adherence causes 30 to 50 percent of chronic disease treatment failures and 125 000 deaths per year in the country.
The CDC says that 24 to 50 percent of patients being treated with statins (cholesterol-lowering medications) who stop their therapy within one year have up to a 25 percent increased risk for dying. During the period that Mmolotsi referred to, government’s health facilities had run out of prescription drugs for chronic conditions. Based on what MoH officials and the CDC have stated, it is more than likely that the worst happened. As a matter of fact, the Leader of the Opposition, Dithapelo Keorapetse, bluntly stated that “people are dying” at the height of the historic drug shortage last year.
“People are dying,” he said when responding to President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s state-of-the-nation. “People are dying of stroke and diabetic coma – which occurs when a patient doesn’t take medication. This amounts to a death sentence and violation of human rights.”
Interestingly and perhaps tellingly, neither the Minister of Health, Dr. Edwin Dikoloti nor Lelatisitswe, ever responded directly to this allegation. Keorapetse also made a statement of fact regarding why the powers-that-be are never anxious to ensure proper management of the healthcare system. He said (in November last year) that he had recently learnt that a certain cabinet minister has been hospitalised and that he was absolutely certain that he hadn’t been hospitalised at a government hospital but a private hospital where there is no drug shortage.
“I don’t think he has been hospitalised at Princess Marina or Selebi Phikwe Hospital or Ramotswa or Nyangabgwe,” the MP quipped.
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