The Botswana Ministry of Health is arranging for the Laboratory officers from different DHMTs to participate in a training programme. The initiative is being hosted in Johannesburg, South Africa and focuses on the Biorisk Management Level 1 Certification.
The Program is cry for the members of the community to become more knowledgeable about their duties in the medical field
The training is conducted at the Regional Centre of Excellence for Biosafety and Biosecurity for Southern Africa. The center is situated in the National Institute of Communicable Diseases.
The training will end on Friday 6th December 2024.
The medical officers have gained significant insight in non communicable diseases. The aim of the project is to make sure that the medical stakeholders can deal with outvreaks of communicable diseases.
In times of crisis, all the stakeholders should have relevant experience and knowledge to deal with a tight situation.
The representative of Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Noluthando Duma delivered a welcome address. She asserted that she was very happy to note that Botswana sent a delegation of laboratory officers which will go a long in addressing the gaps in Biosecurity and biosafety across the country. The training will improve a pool of two officers who were previously training as part of the one Health approach.
In his remarks on behalf of Ministry of Health, Chief Medical Scientific Officer, Koorilleng Kesalopa thanked Africa CDC and National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) for the continued support to the Republic of Botswana.
The two organisations were highly critical in helping Botswana during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. NICD helped the ministry in verifying the first positive cases while providing mentorship and guidance to National Health Laboratory (NHL).
Africa CDC was responsible for donated genomic sequencers to the Ministry. The donation from the CDC helped in making COVID-19 diagnostics easier and other future sequencing work.
Kesalopa informed the facilitators that Botswana laboratory service has waited for more than twelve (12) months for the training and they stand ready to address the identified gaps and ensure that the country improves Joint External Evaluation score which is very low.