A patient is not just another case in the hospital or organism with pathology, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has said.

Tutu was giving a keynote address at the launch of the International Ethics Conference on Retrieving the Human Face of Science held at the University of Botswana (UB) Library auditorium yesterday. He explained that in most of the public hospitals back in the day doctors did not discuss the patients' illness with them or any possible treatment for them. "A patient is not just a case in the hospital or an organism with pathology. They have psychology as well," he said while explaining his experience earlier in his life when he was infected with tuberculosis (TB) and had to spend 20 months in hospitals. He explained that health care providers must treat all their patients the same as people all over the world are a diversity of human kind with a wildering array of giftedness and cannot be the same.

He said in South Africa (during apartheid) black patients were accorded little respect for privacy or the need for confidentiality in hospitals. He said that they were approached as specimens with little regard to asking their permission for any procedure that was to be done on them. "Things have changed since then but not in over crowded rooms. We just need nurses and doctors to be a team," he said. "Your vulnerability is what makes you human and you must be vulnerable for others to see your human side," said the Nobel Prize laurite and Anglican prelate.

Giving a welcoming speech the UB's Vice Chancellor Bojosi Otlhogile said that the challenges facing the health care environment such as escalating health care costs, poverty, HIV/AIDS and other chronic diseases including health care problems couldn't be effectively addressed without research. He explained that it is without any doubt that Botswana has made significant improvements in its health care delivery system over the past decades given that the basic health facility lies within 15km of every gazetted settlement. "We have a strong mobile system that delivers health care to our people in the remote areas," he said.

Professor Bojosi indicated that people have always complained about the quality of consultation they receive from the health care providers. "They have often observed that the patients' dignity which is one of the four principles that our president espouses, has sometimes been impaired in the course of receiving health care," Bojosi stated. He indicated that the patients have not always received sufficient attention or decent treatment. "I have no doubt that therefore that this conference will add value to the quality of the lives of Batswana and the lives of the people in the countries that are represented by the conference participants," Bojosi said.

The five-day conference that is attended by delegates from all over the world seeks to bring together practitioners in the areas of health care, medicine and research to discuss integrity and ethical issues related to health care, medicine and reach. It will also focus on such issues as human response to illness, leadership and the healthcare professions, tradition of mentoring, integrity of research and globalisation and the diplomacy of science.