Catholics offer helping hand

By BOPA

The Roman Catholic Church in Francistown has offered to assist refugees at Dukwi refugee camp to access anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs.

The refugees have been excluded from the government- funded ARV programme because it is exclusively for locals.

The ARV programme is meant for Batswana only.

Since the camp houses foreigners, its residents have been excluded from the programme, the under Secretary for Political Affairs in the Office of the President, Ross Sanoto, told BOPA.

Sanoto appreciated the gesture by the church, but added that sustaining the programme would be a challenge to the church.

Bishop of the Francistown Catholic Church, Frank Nubuasah told BOPA in an interview that his church was preparing to start paying for the treatment of refugees who are ready to take the drugs.

According to the bishop, consultations with other stakeholders on the issue were at an advanced stage.

The bishop added that the programme, dubbed: Outreach of the Catholic Church already has enrolled 21 foreigners on the AIDS drugs programme.

Those enrolled are from, among other countries, Zimbabwe, Zambia and South Africa. The drugs are administered with the assistance of local private medical practitioners, he said.

Outreach of the Catholic Church was initiated by the church in 2004 to help those in need of the life-prolonging drugs but are not covered by government because they are foreigners, Bishop Nubuasah said.

The bishop said his church would work along side the UNHCR to ensure that the refugees continued accessing the drugs even when they would have returned to their countries.

For his part, UNHCR chief of mission Benny Otim described the churchs initiative as a welcome development, adding that the programme would help the refugees while his organisation was still negotiating with the government on how they could assist refugees living with HIV/AIDS.

The government has excluded the refugees from the ARV treatment programme because of the costs involved but UNHCR is still negotiating on how the refugees can be assisted, he said.

Otim said that denying the refugees access to ARV treatment was a setback to the governments fight against the scourge.

The refugees continue to interact with the local community and if they do not get help, the fight against HI/AIDS might be defeated, he said.

The Dukwi refugee camp is home to over 3000 refugees. More than half of them are from neighbouring Namibia and Angola, while others are from, among other countries, Burundi and Somalia.