Botswana’s government expects the number of citizens receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) to increase by more than 50% in the next eight years, reaching 220,000 by 2016, President Ian Khama said last week.
Botswana will also extend triple-drug antiretroviral therapy to all pregnant women within the next year.
However, President Khama warned that expansion of antiretroviral treatment may not be sustainable at the current rate in face of competing development priorities.
Botswana’s expansion of antiretroviral treatment has been amongst the most ambitious in Africa. The country was the first on the continent to offer antiretroviral therapy free of charge through the public healthcare system, and the first to introduce provider-initiated HIV testing and counselling, designed to diagnose people with HIV earlier so that they can benefit from treatment before falling ill.
Around 300,000 people are living with HIV in Botswana. The national treatment programme currently reaches around 80% of those eligible for treatment, according to a report to WHO and UNAIDS made by the government in late 2007, and by December 2008 around 145,000 people had been enrolled on antiretroviral treatment in Botswana through a network of 81 clinics.
President Khama said that antiretroviral therapy had saved 50,000 lives since 2001, and is expected to save 130,000 by 2016.
However, he warned citizens that because taxes are being used to fund antiretroviral treatment, they would be accountable for the failure of their treatment. "The nation demands that every citizen must access treatment on time and all on treatment must adhere. This calls for individual discipline," the Reporter newspaper reported him as saying.
Botswana’s government currently funds around 90% of the country’s expenditure on antiretroviral treatment.