In the second part of this series I hope to introduce the healthcare system of Botswana.
Botswana has two parallel health systems—the public system and private system—each with its own hospitals, clinics, and physicians. Care in the public sector, including laboratory testing, hospitalization and medications, is free for all Batswana (citizens of Botswana are known as Batswana). Read the rest of this entry →
Are you interested in Global Health or International Medicine? The AMA’s student ethics journal, Virtual Mentor recently published a worthwhile article called “Beyond Medical Tourism: Authentic Engagement in Global Health” which provides good advice on how to approach Global Health from a medical student perspective. This short article is a good read for anyone considering going abroad for a ‘medical mission’ or other international health project.
This summer I have had the opportunity to travel to Botswana to participate in global health work and contribute to research investigating the use of telemedicine technology for various healthcare applications. This is the first in a what I hope will be a series of blog entries in which I will discuss health care and medical issues in Botswana.
Botswana is a landlocked country about the size of Texas located just north of South Africa in southern Africa.
The majority of the 1.84 million population are Setswana (or Tswana) and are concentrated along the eastern part of the country due to the largely uninhabitable Kalahari Desert which occupies most of the rest of the territory. 35% of the population are 0-14 years old; 61% are 15-64 years old; and only 4% of the population is older than 65 years.
70% of people living in Botswana are Christian, 7% have indigenous beliefs, and 20% have no religion. While English is the official language, Setswana is still widely spoken and many older Batswana only speak Setswana.
Formerly known as the British colony of Bechuanaland, Botswana gained independence from the British in 1966, but has a long history of democracy through the tribal meetings of the kgotlas. The country is now a stable democratic parliamentary republic and has a market-based economy among the strongest in Africa. Most of Botswana’s wealth comes from diamond mines most of which are co-owned by DeBeers and the Botswana Government. Beef exports and tourism also contribute to the economy. Despite this socio-economic stability, poverty remains a concern with a large gap between rich and poor existing and unemployment remaining close to 40%. Education and healthcare are free, and the national literacy rate is greater than 80%.
For more general information about Botswana, check out the Botswana Tourism Board and check back for more entries!
From the University of Pennsylvania Press, comes a new book titled Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward. Edited by Laura Reichenbach of the Population Council and Mindy Jane Roseman of Harvard Law School, the book reflects on the past fifteen years of international efforts surrounding health, poverty, and gender inequality, with special focus on the consequences of the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) and its resulting Programme of Action.
From the publisher’s website:
The book grapples with fundamental questions about the relationships among population, fertility decline, reproductive health, human rights, poverty alleviation, and development and assesses the various arguments — demographic, public health, human rights-based, and economic — for an against ICPD today.
A number of the chapters address institutional challenges to ICPD and consider how the challenging political, religious, academic, and disciplinary contexts matter. Other chapters engage operational and conceptual issues and whether ICPD has been able to move the reproductive health agenda forward on topics such as maternal mortality, abortion, HIV/AIDS, adolescents, reproductive technologies, and demography. Finally, several chapters examine how ICPD has been sidelined by emerging health and development agendas and what could be done in response. Unlike any book yet published, Reproductive Health and Human Rights: The Way Forward examines the state of the arguments for reproductive health and rights from a multidisciplinary perspective that provides policymakers, scholars, and activists with a better understanding of how reproductive health and rights have developed, their place in the global policy agenda, and how they might evolve most effectively in the future.
To read an excerpt from the book, click here.
