Knowledge sharing between neighbours

Facing parallel challenges in haemophilia awareness and care, two countries joined forces with a collaborative training initiative in the Botswanan capital Gaborone.

A challenge of infrastructure and capacity

Before 2018, people with haemophilia could access basic care at Princess Marina Hospital in Gaborone. Out in the regions of Botswana, there was little or no access to haemophilia care.

Neighbouring Namibia, with a comparable population of people living with haemophilia, faced similar challenges in infrastructure and capacity across the country.

Partnering up

In the Botswana 1 & Namibia 1 project, the two active patient organisations teamed up to address their country’s challenges in order to raise awareness of haemophilia in a strategic way.

This came in the form of a joint training workshop held in June 2019 at Princess Marina Hospital, organised by the two project teams, in partnership with the Botswana Haemophilia Society and the Namibia Haemophilia Foundation.

It saw the Botswana Haemophilia Society, the Namibia Haemophilia Foundation, members of the Global HOPE Botswana programme – a public-private partnership ‘Haematology-Oncology Paediatric Excellence’ – and nurses from Princess Marina Hospital gather together to learn and share knowledge with one another.

Empowerment and knowledge-sharing

Empowering participants in strategic awareness creation in their home countries was the key objective of the training. This was enhanced by the premise that the haemophilia communities in Botswana and Namibia could learn from one another.

The workshop equipped us with skills to plan and implement effective media campaigns to raise public awareness about haemophilia in Namibia.

said Immanuel Mayiji from Namibia Haemophilia Foundation

Importantly, this supports our drive to improve rates of diagnosis.

During the two-day workshop, 21 participants benefited from joint-learning and information exchange.

Quite uniquely, it fostered a platform for knowledge-sharing between two countries for future success in improving haemophilia care.

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