The Ministry of Health (MOH) through the Expanded Program on Immunisation (EPI) and its implementing partners recently launched the Saving Lives and Livelihoods’ program with the mandate to improve the ‘under five’ vaccines uptake in the North West and Kgalagadi South districts.
MOH in partnership with ACHAP, Botswana Redcross and BoMRA launched the program that will operate for the next three months with the objectives of helping the District Health Management Teams in the two areas to strengthen national immunization service in health care facilities and to also introduce life course immunizations.
When giving the keynote address in Maun, a Public Health Specialist Dr Keatlaretse Siamisang, said the program is also aimed at improving the knowledge and skills of health care workers. He further said the Ministry of Health has accelerated the ‘under five’ vaccine uptake to curb the risk of disease outbreaks.
To achieve this, Dr Siamisang said the Ministry of Health partnered with stakeholders to improve immunisation coverage and catch-up vaccinations to those children who missed because of various factors.
He further highlighted that the two districts (North West and Kgalagadi South) were chosen because they have low under five vaccine uptakes leading to high mortality rates and that they have hard to reach mobile stops because of tough terrains coupled with many other challenges.
He said vaccines are responsible for a huge reduction of diseases like tetanus and measles adding that they are able to prevent outbreaks. He said that the SLL program will ensure that no child in the two districts is left behind. “We will also ensure that we take the lessons learnt in thethese districts to other districts in the country to ensure that we do everything in our power to endure that children are protected,” he said.
Meanwhile, the North West District Health Management Team Coordinator Sandra Maripe highlighted that they are operating in 22 villages with 30 facilities-1 Public Hospital, 12 clinics, 17 health posts. She further said that they provide health care services to many areas as the district is very vast adding that Maun as a tourism hub, they also provide the services to 55 camps in the Delta.
Maripe indicated that such places are some of the hard-to-reach areas, some of which are not accessible by road. She indicated that sometimes they are not able to take services for the under five children staying in the far areas.
She therefore said that they are privileged to be launching the SLL program which they believe will help extend the vaccination coverage amongst the under-five population as they have not been doing so well.
