Botswana: Church offers helping hand

The Roman Catholic Church in Francistown has offered to assist refugees at Dukwi refugee camp to access anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. The refugees have been excluded from the government- funded ARV programme because it is exclusively for Batswana only. The under Secretary for Political Affairs in the Office of the President, Ross Sanoto, appreciated the gesture by the church, but added that sustaining the programme would be a challenge. The bishop said his church would work along side the UNHCR to ensure that the refugees continued accessing the drugs even when they would have returned to their countries.