25 Jun 2024

Botswana will honour Professor Paul Klotman, president, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Dean of the Baylor College of Medicine.

President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi made the announcement during a courtesy call by Prof. Klotman in Gaborone on Tuesday.

He said Prof. Klotman had been the web, the doer and the brains behind all the good that had emerged through the partnership of government and Baylor.

“I am pleased to inform you that my government will give you an appropriate national honour,” he said.

Dr Masisi expressed his appreciation for the support and guidance provided by Baylor since establishing in Botswana more than 20 years ago.

Through partnership with the government of Botswana, the Baylor College of Medicine International Pediatric AIDS Initiative at Texas Children’s Hospital with support from the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation established the Botswana-Baylor Trust in 2003, the first pediatric HIV clinic in Africa.

The impact of the partnership was clear as children and the general public have benefited from HIV and AIDS care and treatment support programmes, contributing significantly to the almost elimination of mother-to-child-transmission of HIV in the country.

Post 20 years, Dr Masisi said, he was hopeful that the partnership had a long way to go and would continue to gain strength.

He said the partnership had been beneficial and had stood the test of time. He said Baylor’s efficacy was beyond reasonable doubt not only to the scientific world as it extended to the pharmaceutical industry and touched in a special way, the general public.

The President said the country was currently driving its development agenda through a two-year transitional development plan, which would be followed by NDP12 post March 2025.

As such, President Masisi informed Prof Klotman that the desire was for the partnership to be more ingenious in how it was to be done.

He said the focus was to clamp HIV, expand opportunities for training towards building capacity for vaccine manufacturing.

“We want to have the capacity to produce vaccines,” he said.

The President emphasised on growing the partnership, adding that the target was to drastically deal with HIV incidence rate as well as to grow the capacity to deal with other pandemics.

Therefore, President Masisi assured Baylor of the country’s commitment to the project and health issues in general.
“I am grateful for the job we have done as a collective, including the support you rendered to us during a critical time of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

As a developing nation, President Masisi said, the country was experiencing capacity challenges in accessing COVID-19 drugs, a situation which was bound to deplete the health budget.

“What you did well served us greatly. We could have lost a lot of money in securing drugs or even had our budget depleted before getting the drugs. If it was not for your intervention, we could have depleted our health budget,” he said. ENDS