‘Prioritise healthcare funding’

 When he steps up to the podium on Monday to deliver the fist ever budget for the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) led government, Minister of Finance Ndaba Gaolathe will be alive to the mammoth task at hand. Batswana from all walks of life are watching with keen interest if the UDC will deliver the lofty promises they made to the electorates ahead of the 2024 general election, which ushered them into office. Already, the Minister and the President, Advocate Duma Boko have used different for a to tell Batswana that government coffers are empty, predominantly due to the prolonged depression in the diamond market -Botswana’s biggest contributor to the Gross Domestic Product. 

Secretary General of Botswana’s leading labour federation – Botswana Federation of Public, Private and Parastatal Sector Unions (BOFEPUSU) – Robert Rabasimane has raised expectation on Ndaba’s national budget due on Monday. Top of the list, he has urged the UDC government to prioritise funding for the ministry of health. 

“Health is not a choice. No one chooses when to be sick. But anyone can choose whether to be a unionist or not. It cannot be denied anymore than health is a security organ which many countries have used as a bio-war and made economical advance through robustness of their healthcare systems to advance their continued reliance on foreign aid and trained specialists can never potentiate the health security of the country. Any biochemical warfare cannot be defeated or apprehended beforehand with the current healthcare state of high medical care dependency,” warned Rabasimane. economic advantages. Botswana’s 

He said as a security organ healthcare should be prioritised and funded like BDF, DISS and report weekly to the President, adding that with that Batswana will be safer and life expectancy would increase. 

His comments come at a time when the United States Government under newly elected President Donald Trump has announced plans to stop funding to foreign countries – a move that has plunged many NGOs locally that depended on American grants into the doldrums. A high number of local NGOs that have been set up for health-related interventions such as the fight against stereotypes on HIV, provision of medical support and HIV testing centres and relied heavily on grants from the American Government. 

Services suspended 

The Ministry has released a statement on the back of the US’s pull back to assure the public that services will continue to be offered. 

“There are multiple Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and Non- Governmental Organizations (NGOs) operating in the health space that were directly affected by the decision to suspend support. Following this decision, most CSOs and NGOs especially those performing functions in the HIV/ AIDS area, both the prevention and treatment arms, have since closed for business, like Tebelopele Voluntary Testing and Counselling centres across the country, in compliance with the decision. As of now, it is not known how long the closures will take. The Ministry therefore, advises members of the public and all clients who have been receiving services from these CSOs and NGOs to seek services from the nearest public health facilities. Every effort will be made by the Ministry to provide these services as before. Fortunately, in some cases some of these partners have been providing services within the public health facilities. 

The Ministry also wishes to inform the public that all possible efforts will be made to avail lubricants, condoms and other preventive devices at both public and private facilities so that no gap is experienced. Although provision of ARVs at post offices has also been temporarily halted, the Ministry will make arrangements and communicate as to what patients can do for continued service provision,” said the Ministry. 

Increase healthcare funding 

Despite this, consecutive budgets have predominantly supported the ministry of health with the country having had to spend heavily in the fight against HIV/AIDS and subsequently from 2019 in fighting the Covid-19 outbreak. 

In the 2024/25 total recurrent budget proposal for ministries stood at P63.74 billion while the development budget was P29.77 billion. The ministry of health received the fourth largest share amounting to P9.46 billion. 

The budget presentation is also coming at a time when the new Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) has announced the setting up of the Universal Health Insurance to deal with the exclusion of sections of society from quality health care services. It will be seen whether the current budget will reflect the first steps taken to fund the setting up of the insurance scheme. 

This budget also comes in the midst of standoff between the Ministry of Health and the Botswana Nurses Union (BONU) which has threatened to pull the nurses from doing any non-nursing duties. The nurses have been covering for the shortage of pharmacists in their areas of operation by dispensing off medication. They have constantly called for proper financial rewards for this but government has not budged.