GABORONE - Government will during National Development Plan 10 (NDP 10) digress from concentrating on wildlife and wilderness in the tourism sector and focus on product and geographical diversification while seeking to promote domestic and international consumption.

President Lt Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama announced during his State-of-the-Nation address last Friday that Botswana Tourism Board was coordinating the development of heritage sites and other areas of interest with a view to marketing them as tourism destinations.

In all of these efforts, government remains committed to ensuring that local communities are involved in, and derive direct benefits from, the sustainable management of local resources, President Khama said.

This reform, he said, included those living in and next to the CKGR, where a revised management plan now forms the basis for ongoing consultations.

Government has established a tourism land bank where land is made readily available for tourism development, this being a move to avert lack of readily available land.

The predator management strategy will during NDP 10 be finalised to holistically address predator-livestock conflict.

In the meantime, various measures have been put in place to tackle such conflict and more will be done in this regard.

In the health arena, President Khama announced that the 450-bed Medical Teaching Hospital is on schedule and planned for commissioning during the 2012/13 financial year.

In addition to teaching and patient care, the facility will facilitate local research and serve as an anchor for referral services, he said. During the coming financial year, President Khama said, an Eye Centre will be established at Sekgoma Memorial Hospital in Serowe, while the Eye Centre at the Deborah Retief Memorial Hospital in Mochudi has been revived. He said in cooperation with the Cambridge University Addenbrookes Hospital, a Diabetic Retinopathy Prevention Service has already begun to operate at Princess Marina Hospital.

Since March, we have also engaged a team from Wits University to perform knee and hip replacements at Princess Marina Hospital, while private practice services in cardiology have started operating in Serowe and Maun while a Cardio-Thoracic Surgery Centre, is being established at the new Scottish Livingstone Hospital in Molepolole.

The President further announced that a National Health Service Plan is being formulated to solve uncoordinated and fragmented delivery of health services, access, equitable distribution and affordability. He added that a health situational analysis has been made along with a Draft Essential Health Service Package, which sets out minimum services to be offered by facilities to customers. BOPA