Free AIDS Care Brings Hope to Botswana

While poorer African nations can only dream of providing life-saving AIDS drugs, diamond-rich Botswana is negotiating with drug companies, upgrading its health care system, poring through medical literature and moving forward in an effort to save its most precious industry and its people. This month, diamond giant Debswana became the first employer in the country to cover 90 percent of the cost of treating its employees with HIV. And in September, Botswana expects to begin offering free triple-therapy treatment in public hospitals in Gaborone and Francistown. Patients will be eligible for this care upon presenting a national identity card.

The news is cause for hope in the nation where 36 percent of adults are believed to be HIV-positive. Dr. Banu Khan, national AIDS coordinator, said the government expects to pay about $600 per person for a year's treatment. The situation in Botswana (population 1.5 million) is markedly different than in neighboring South Africa (population 44 million). South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki, who has repeatedly questioned the cause of AIDS and the safety of AIDS drugs, devoted only two lines of his state of the nation address to the epidemic. In contrast, President Festus Mogae of Botswana devoted half of his national address to the disease and has personally led the crusade against it. Still, better care has not come without controversy. Debswana's workers were shocked when the company announced it would provide the drugs only for one spouse per worker and no children at all. Counselors and doctors worry that better drug access will lead people to abandon safer sex practices and that non-compliance to the drug regimens will contribute to the spread of drug-resistant HIV strains.

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