Background Botswana provides a surprisingly unfortunate case in looking at research-policy linkages on HIV/AIDS. The country has long been viewed as an African economic success story and remains economically strong. Yet, it has failed dismally regarding HIV prevention: the country now has one of the highest prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS in the world. It is estimated that 39% of adults between th...

BACKGROUND Concurrent with efforts to establish national and regional biorepositories in Africa is widespread endorsement of ethics committees as stewards of the interests of individual donors and their communities. To date, ethics training programs for IRB members in Botswana have focused on ethical principles and international guidelines rather than on the ethical dimensions of specific medic...

BACKGROUND Cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women in Botswana and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa. We sought to examine whether HPV vaccine is acceptable among parents in Botswana, which recently licensed the vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. METHODS AND FINDINGS We conducted a cross-sectional survey in 2009, around the time the vaccine was first licensed, with adults recruit...

BACKGROUND Botswana's medical school graduated its first class in 2014. Given the importance of attracting doctors to rural areas the school incorporated rural exposure throughout its curriculum. AIM This study explored the impact of rural training on students' attitudes towards rural practice. SETTING The University of Botswana family medicine rural training sites, Maun and Mahalapye. ME...

OBJECTIVE Currently clinicians in sub-Saharan Africa have limited access to the Internet, whereas mobile phone access and use is extensive. The University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with the National Library of Medicine launched txt2MEDLINE, a short messaging service (SMS) query of PubMed/MEDLINE, and SMS-optimized clinical guidelines in Botswana. The objective of this project was to esta...

BACKGROUND The expansion of combination antiretroviral treatment (ART) in southern Africa has dramatically reduced mortality due to AIDS-related infections, but the impact of ART on cancer incidence in the region is unknown. We sought to describe trends in cancer incidence in Botswana during implementation of the first public ART program in Africa. METHODS We included 8479 incident cases from...

INTRODUCTION Vaccine acceptance is a critical component of sustainable immunization programs, yet rates of vaccine hesitancy are rising. Increased access to misinformation through media and anti-vaccine advocacy is an important contributor to hesitancy in the United States and other high-income nations with robust immunization programs. Little is known about the content and effect of informatio...

Karakul sheep breed has a lot to offer to livestock production in many parts of Botswana. This breed of sheep is acclimatised to desert conditions, which prevail in most parts of Botswana. This breed produces a range of products viz meat, milk, fur/pelt and wool, allowing for diversification of farm produce hence reduced risks attached to the production of a single product. The Karakul breed ha...

Novel infectious diseases are recognized when nonimmune persons move into the ecologic niche of a pathogen and become inadvertent hosts. One population at frequent risk to such emerging pathogens is the military. Historical examples of this phenomenon include outbreaks of scrub typhus during World War II and Korean hemorrhagic fever during the Korean War (1). In this report, we describe a moder...

This study used morphometric techniques to generate new information describing the evolution and hydrogeological behaviour of Limpopo River Basin in Botswana, based on analysis drainage surface features, form, size. Drainage basins provide basic their evolution, which, when quantified, yield interaction between tectonics, climatic, processes. networks were extracted from Shuttle Radar Topograph...