This was stated by the Minister of Health, Dr Stephen Modise in Parliament on Friday when making an input on a motion by Tswapong South legislator, Dr Kesitegile Gobotswang that called for the introduction of screening for such diseases.

“Approach to health by the past administration during the era of HIV and AIDS was that it was too concentrated on the curative part of the healthcare service while the prevention and primary care suffered,” he said.

He said the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) government wanted to correct that anomaly and focus more on primary care which covered screening to treat diseases before taking hold of people.

Dr Modise said that government would also try as much as possible, to make screening not only available, but accessible to a large population, with frequency of screening varying according to diseases.

He said statistics indicated that cervical cancer was the most common in Botswana, even affecting women of younger ages than before.

“This is quite a concern and we intend to deal with it aggressively and to achieve this, we need to have good screening practices hence a need to have such services available to a wider population,” he said.

Cervical cancer, he said, was followed by breast, prostate and colon cancers. 

“Units in our health facilities such as oncology wards are overwhelmed because of these so, there is no how we cannot be concerned as government. We are shifting the paradigm and want our approach to health to be more preventative,” he said.

Dr Modise reckoned that it was concerning that some of the non-communicable diseases also precipitated other conditions that affected vital organs like heart and kidneys, hence their label as silent killers.

He also said prevention was much cheaper than cure, and by prioritising screening, government would save on costs. He said that apart from health concerns, non-communicable diseases also affected the quality of life.

Dr Gobotswang had moved that government introduce biannual heath checks to diagnose and treat illnesses before they could progress to advanced stages.

He argued that this would also help avoid longer hospitalisations and reduce high medical costs.

He said that most people lived with non-communicable diseases without their knowledge, which could lead to misconceptions of sudden deaths. Dr Gobotswang said that at the moment, most heath checks were done out of benevolence by good Samaritans.

He said that although there was that provision to test at government facilities, such was not done in earnest as priority was always given to those with symptoms, due to shortage of equipment and reagents.

Contributing to the motion, Mmopane/Metsimotlhabe MP, Ms Helen Manyeneng cautioned against medications that could predispose patients to other diseases. 

She also said it was a concern that statistics indicated that pupils were also affected by cancers, which she said called for  screenings at schools.

“We should introduce roaming nurses that will also cover schools, especially that our clinics are too overwhelmed to reserve sections to cater only for students,” she said and called for the establishment of hospices to care for patients whose conditions were no longer curable. BOPA