ONGOING BAIS IV ON THE RIGHT TRACK
At the end of July 2013, Batswana will know whether their efforts in fighting HIV and AIDS are bearing fruits when the preliminary results of the on-going fourth Botswana AIDS Impact survey are released.
The survey will among other things update current information on the behavioral patterns of the populations aged 10-64 years and the HIV prevalence and incidence rates among those aged 6 weeks through to 64 at national, district and sub-district level.
The fieldwork for the fourth Botswana AIDS Impact Survey, (BAIS IV) which started on January 22, 2013 is expected to be completed on April 24. According to the data quality control team comprising of officers from the National AIDS Coordinating Agency, (NACA) and Statistics Botswana, Batswana are participating in the survey in large numbers. The team says many Batswana have been volunteering to be tested for HIV during the survey including those who have not been sampled.
Twenty-nine teams comprising of 6-enumerators, 1 supervisor and 3 drivers per team are currently in the field collecting data as well as testing the sampled population for HIV. Each team is expected to cover between 10 and 11 enumeration area during the survey and there are 301 enumeration areas to be covered. The field work which was scheduled to be completed on March 15th had to be extended to April 24 due to a number of logistical problems.
The BAIS IV survey has employed a number of innovations including the use of tablets to replace the paper questionnaires eliminating the delays in data entry from paper to questionnaire. The survey will also avail test results to the Batswana who participated in the survey and wishing to know their results, thereby contributing to the national goal of Eliminating new HIV infections by 2016.
The information from BAIS IV will be used for continuous strategic prevention and national HIV programme planning and guide future HIV and AIDS research.
Specifically the survey is intended to:
- To provide current national HIV estimates among the population aged 6 weeks through 64 years.
- To provide indicative trends in sexual and preventive behavior among the population aged 10-64 years.
To provide a comparison between HIV rate, behavior, knowledge, attitude, poverty and cultural factors that are associated with the epidemic with estimates derived from previous surveys.
- To increase the numbers of those who know their HIV status and assist linking those found to be HIV positive to healthcare system.
- Additionally: To produce survey results in a timely manner and ensure that the data are disseminated to a wide audience of potential users in government and non-governmental organizations within and outside Botswana.
BACKGROUND
The third Botswana AIDS Impact Survey, (BAIS III) took place in 2008 and according to its results, 17.6% of 2.3-million Batswana were living with HIV. According to the results, prevalence among females was 20.4 percent while males had 14.2percent. The rate of new infections was higher among females than males at an estimated at 3.5 and 2.3 percent respectively.
HIV prevalence by districts revealed that Selebe Phikwe, Sowa, Francistown, Chobe and North East were among the top 5 highly affected areas. Selebe Phikwe and Francistown were the highest in HIV prevalence rates at 26.5 percent and 23.1 percent. However Chobe showed contrast of being one of the highest in prevalence at 23.0 percent but one of the lowest estimated prevalence rates at 1 percent.