The Council for Health Service Accreditation of Southern Africa have documented assessment reports mentioning the poor healthcare system in Botswana. The ministry and department of health are making every effort to improve the healthcare system in Botswana.

Public Health System in Botswana

The public healthcare system serves lower income and poor section of the society while only rich can afford private healthcare facilities. The local people in Botswana are forced to rely on traditional medical practices which operate informally. The healthcare industry in Botswana needs to enforce better management of healthcare facilities. The countrys public healthcare system focuses on HIV/AIDS prevention since most of the adults are infected with this disease. Public health, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), clinics and hospitals have multifaceted response to a variety of medical and healthcare issues.Non-governmental organisations provide limited services related to counselling, testing of HIV/AIDS and other diseases.
Population of Botswana face challenges like compromised quality of services, shortage of human resource and problems associated with urbanization. Botswanas Public health sector has inexperienced staff, inadequate planning, poorly deployed and underutilized management of human resource. Poor working conditions and comprehensive retention strategies fail to attract and retain skilled or trained personnel.Overall efforts made should be more effective, responsive and result-driven towards universal health coverage, accelerating global development goals and tackling emerging threats. The ministry of health needs to partner with civil societies as conventional setups find difficulty in reaching key population of vulnerable groups. Ministry of Health has initiated various awareness campaigns to prevent, treat and control communicable and non communicable diseases, socio-cultural, behavioural, occupational and environmental health problems. Private institutes or companies, government and non-governmental organizations are working in collaboration to improve public healthcare system.

Public Health Infrastructure

The existence of limited and inadequate resources have increased the challenges associated with quality care and incapacitated the delivery of services provided by the hospitals. Inequities and inefficiencies in the distribution of inpatient beds and other health services or facilities are challenging. Though considerable amount of resources have been invested in building hospitals around Botswana, physical access to services is limited, delivery of service is inadequate and organizational governance of the hospital system is mismanaged. The mismanaged organizational governance of public hospitals negatively impacts hospitals performance and lack of autonomy in proper management, limits the ability of managers to have any positive influence on the performance of the hospital. The need for comprehensive and multidimensional improvement in hospital performance is important. The focus of broad range of policy levers lies on inducing properly managed and organized delivery system of quality health services with maximum usage of resources.
The authoritative and decision-making organizational structure of public healthcare system in Botswana’s are highly centralized. The ongoing efforts to decentralize management of the hospitals; establish district health management structures; coordinate and manage health service delivery even to district level entities will need to be expedited. These structures built should have sufficient capacity to ensure that the responsibilities are effectively distributed and handled. Furthermore, investment in health promotion, human resource training, improvement in health facilities, infrastructure and private-public collaborations are essential.

Online Course in Public Health

James Lind Institute (JLI) provides an online program in Master of Science in Public Health (MPH) in collaboration with Universit telematica internazionale Uninettuno. JLI also provides advanced courses in Maternal and Child Health, Tropical Medicine, Healthcare Management, Occupational Health, Environmental Health and Sexual and Reproductive Health.
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