Botswana Health Official reveals HIV/AIDS knowledge figures Mmegi / afrol News, 3 April - A senior Ministry of Health official has said that the number of people who know their HIV/AIDS status in the country have increased by 20 percentage points since 2001. Operations manager of the Ministry of Health's MASA ARV programme Segolame Ramotlhwa said that when they rolled out the initiative in 2001, 90 percent of the people did not know their status.But the number has since reduced to 70 percent. Ramotlhwa told a workshop on changing HIV/AIDS impact patterns in the wake of the ARV therapy that the ARV programmes have so far consumed at least P700 million. He said it is three to four times more costly to stabilise patients who join the programme when they are already sick. He said more resources and time are spent on such patients. Ramotlhwa said that by January this year, close to 60, 000 patients were enrolled in the programme. By 2009, 110,000 patients are expected to be on ARV. Ramotlhwa said they still face challenges of inadequate human resources and space and infrastructure. Other challenges are social-cultural such as fear of testing and stigma. When speaking on approaches to families affected by HIV/AIDS, the executive director of Botswana-Baylor Children's Clinical Centre of Excellence, Professor Gabriel Anabwani said that they have 220 families out of which 163 are on ARVs. By Thato Chwaane © Mmegi / afrol News - Create an e-mail alert for Botswana news - Create an e-mail alert for Health news
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