The Penn community was extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to hear former President of the Republic of Botswana, Festus Mogae speak about his country's response to HIV/AIDS. As part of the Botswana-UPenn Partnership, the lecture was an inspiring account of how a developing nation can devote its resources, attention and commitment to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS, a task President Mogae hopes to accomplish by 2016.
He has invested much of the country's annual budget in tackling this health crisis. His ground-breaking antiretroviral drugs program made Botswana the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to provide universal, free access to the medicines. It is due, in large part, to this commitment that the HIV-transmission rate from mothers to children went from 40 percent to 4 percent. Such gains are also a result of the many steps undertaken by President Mogae: advocating for routine HIV testing and counseling, negotiating with pharmaceutical companies to provide antiretroviral drugs at a discounted rate (and receiving up to 95 percent in discounts!), and partnering with Merck and the Gates Foundation to provide comprehensive prevention, care, treatment, and support.
As President Mogae described, the AIDS pandemic in Botswana was dire. Health facilities were overwhelmed. In many hospitals, there was hardly room to walk. Such scarcity led to Community Home Based Care projects and other efforts to support children who have been orphaned or otherwise left vulnerable because of the ravages of HIV/AIDS. For some of our nursing students in the audience, they were all-too-familiar with the programs that the Former President described because they had worked on these projects just this past summer.
Eight Penn Nursing students spent five weeks in Botswana this summer completing their Community Health clinical rotation; many of them worked at various Home Based Care sites around the country. Clinical days often involved driving to remote villages and walking from house to house, accompanied by local health volunteers and nurses, to visit patients in their homes. Komal Patel, one of our students who worked at a Home Based Care site, reflected on the program: "If there is no caregiver in the family, the volunteers and nurses become the primary caregivers. This care concept is almost unheard of in the United States... it has been a very humbling experience."
The students also spent a lot of their free time in Botswana working at Kamogelo Day Care Center. Kamogelo supports orphaned and vulnerable children in one community of Botswana by providing them with education, school uniforms, and even basic necessities, like food and transportation to medical facilities. Our Penn Nursing students enhanced the programs there by offering health screenings for the children, and even health education classes for the children's' parents and teachers. A short documentary about their work can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flT2fya7VWo
I also encourage you to read a blog by Kayla and Shira Kapito, two attendees at this year's International Conference on Women's Health Issues, held in Botswana. It can be found here: http://deanmeleis.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-blogs-from-icowhi-conference.html
In Botswana, the focus is now on fighting the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. "Priority number one is a new campaign focused on behavior changes," President Mogae explained. More specifically, he said, the aim is to change male attitudes and behaviors. Multiple partners, low condom use, and low levels of male circumcision all contribute to the HIV/AIDS problem facing the country. Currently, there are more women infected from this disease than men, with women in the 15-19 and 35-39 age groups most disproportionately affected. It is because of President Mogae's strong commitment to women's health that I was honored to present him with the Taylor & Francis Distinguished Research Award at the International Council on Women's Health Issues conference earlier this summer. The award was established to honor accomplishments and to highlight the critical need for ongoing attention to global healthcare issues for women. Former President Mogae has been quoted as saying “One more day of delayed action is a day too late for our people, ... Our people are crying out for help. Let us respond while there is time.” Throughout his life, President Mogae has led by example and practiced what he has preached, and it was wonderful to have had him on campus.
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