The Aids pandemic in Africa is being worsened by the flight of many health professionals to other continents, Botswanan Local Government Minister Gladys Kokorwe warned here Monday at the opening of a five-day conference on the disease.
”With the internationalisation of expertise, human resources have become scarce globally,” she said.
”The movement of health professionals and scientists in search of greener pastures has unfortunately for us depleted our scarce human resource and has left many of our countries in dire need of these health professionals.
”And that has had a deleterious effect on the quality of our services.”
Sixty-seven delegates, including physicians, scientists and laboratory workers from 16 African countries, the Caribbean and the Unites States, gathered in the world’s most heavily infected country to work out how to upgrade laboratory quality systems in a bid to fight the deadly disease.
In Botswana 38,8% of adults are HIV-positive or have full-blown Aids. – Sapa-AFP