‘I want my life back’: drugs shortages lay bare economic impact of diamond crash in Botswana
Healthcare should be free but lack of essential supplies has led to patients being told to buy their own medicines I n late 2023, Boitumelo Mosege fell sick. Her neck swelled up, her whole body itched and she fainted frequently. She was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and had to
Healthcare should be free but lack of essential supplies has led to patients being told to buy their own medicines
I n late 2023, Boitumelo Mosege fell sick. Her neck swelled up, her whole body itched and she fainted frequently. She was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and had to give up her work as a farmer on the outskirts of Molepolole, a town about 30 miles north-west of Botswana’s capital, Gaborone.
In Botswana, public healthcare is supposed to be universal and free. However, Mosege said she had only sporadically received medication since becoming ill. The 53-year-old relies on her four children’s occasional piecework (where a worker is paid a fixed rate per task or unit produced), and her mother’s 1,400 pula (£77) monthly pension, to afford 2,000 pula-worth of medication every month. In early May, she said it was three months since she had last bought medicine.
“I felt like I had lost my life right there,” Mosege said, recounting when she was told she had to buy her medication herself. “I felt suicidal.”
Nearby, Kelly Jansen cares full time for her 83-year-old father, Gerhardus Jansen, who uses a wheelchair. They spend a third of his pension on medication and supplies including a blood pressure monitor and compression stockings.
Jansen, 39, is searching for someone to donate an electric wheelchair, which would give her more freedom. “I want my life back,” she said.
Last year, shortages of essential medicines and medical supplies led the president, Duma Boko, to declare a public health emergency , 10 months after he defeated the party that had ruled Botswana since independence from Britain in 1966.
Health procurement had long been dysfunctional. But a multi-year economic downturn caused by a collapse in demand for diamonds, which are 80% of Botswana’s exports, tipped it over the edge, Boko wrote in an opinion piece for the Guardian in February. Meanwhile, the economic malaise has pushed up unemployment in what has long been one of the most stable and wealthiest countries in Africa.
