HIV/NCDs pose major threat for Botswana

Chief Executive Officer of the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships (ACHAP), Dr Jerome Mafeni has warned against ignoring the link between HIV/AIDS and Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) as the country faces the double burden of the killer diseases.

Addressing a public lecture at the University of Botswana Conference Centre, Dr Mafeni pointed out that NCD’s, once thought of as a “rich people’s problem,” were also rising fast in the country’s rural areas where people’s diets have not changed for the past 50 years.“What we also need to appreciate is that while early on, in the AIDS epidemic, people infected with the virus often lost a dangerous amount of weight, today, they are facing the opposite problem partly because of complications caused by life saving drugs they are taking. Many who have HIV, but not full-blown AIDS, are struggling with obesity,” he said. Besides having the third largest HIV population in the world, Botswana is also one of the fattest nations on the continent.

A recent Botswana Family Health Study shows that up to 70 percent of Batswana women and a third of men are overweight or obese, while quarter of girls and one in five boys between 2 and 14 years are overweight or obese.

Obesity is associated with Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, joint pain and certain cancers.
“Some NCDs are related to HIV infection itself, and to the side effects of some of the medicines used to treat HIV infection,” Dr Mafeni explained. Furthermore, he said several opportunistic illnesses associated with HIV are NCDs, such as HIV-associated lymphoma and cervical cancer. He expressed concern that funds earmarked for the treatment of NCDs, in contrast, barely exist.

“It is a perfect public health storm that the government can’t address successfully without help from development partners.
“It would be a real shame for someone to survive dying from HIV/AIDS only to then die from a disease that is preventable,” he said, calling for a holistic and fearless approach when dealing with the ‘silent killers’.