This week the University of Botswana (UB) is hosting one of its biggest conferences on Health and Health Research.

Thinkers and practitioners are gathered in Gaborone for a series of workshops and discussions around the topic of ethics in the healthcare, medicine and research sectors.

This event, graced by none other than the legendary Archbishop Desmond Tutu places Botswana once again at the heart of major issues surrounding health and health provision.

Botswana is faced with major challenges in the health sector among them limited resources and an increasingly demanding clientele.

Our HIV/AIDS experience also means that we might have a thing or two to offer those who are faced with the same challenges. That the conference has chosen the rarely tackled issue of ethics as its focus indicates that the health and affiliated sectors are alive to the human need at the centre of their vocation. Often, the health sector, with its eye on major issues of research tend to fail to give proper attention to such matters as ethics and the dignity of those accessing healthcare services.

We hope that in these sessions, the participants will reflect on the welfare of the health worker. As Tutu indicated in his keynote address, at the heart of health services should be respect of human dignity.

Health workers face daunting challenges as resources become limited and yet the standards of service expected of them keep rising with each generation. This puts strain on the doctors, nurses and everyone else who has to deliver this service. We know also that no nurses in public hospitals have to work attend even more patients. Ultimately workers have no ability to treat patients with decency because of the sheer amount of work they have to perform.

The good thing about such gatherings is that international experience can be harnessed and used to find solutions for local problems because the current challenges are not peculiar to one country only.

It is important to note that while these issues continue to be the focus of health practitioners and scholars alike, the political leadership continues to fail to address the question of access. There is no viable explanation as to how, in the level of technological advancements such as we have now, people still die of curable diseases.

It seems therefore that the current political and economic system has provided advances in technology and the means to deny the majority of the world's citizens access to new solutions alike. It is an indictment on our political and corporate leaders that a child can still die of Malaria or any preventable disease.

Every civilisation's success is measured by its ability to provide for the majority of its people. If it cannot do this, then all the inventions and perfect findings may as well be buried under the seabed. It is therefore incumbent upon the leaders of the world to make sure that the majority of the people enjoy the benefits of cutting edge technology in all fields including health and medicine.

Today's Thought

"The reason that countries are using lousy drugs to treat malaria is that they can't afford better drugs."

- Nick White