Holistic Approach On Diseases the Best

Nico Smit

17 June 2011

MULTI-DISEASE screening, such as that carried out by Bophelo, has drawn more people to testing as it removes the stigma attached to HIV-AIDS testing, says Professor Rich Feely from Boston University.

Launched in 2009, Bophelo is a partnership between the Namibia Business Coalition on AIDS (Nabcoa), PharmAccess Foundation Namibia (PAF), and the Namibia Institute of Pathology (NIP).

Bophelo aims to provide confidential on-site voluntary counselling and testing, as well as a wellness screening service for individuals.

It also provides insight into health risks in the workplace and reports anonymous statistics to employers to improve employee HIV and wellness programmes.

Using two mobile testing units, Bophelo conducted wellness screening at various workplaces across the country in 2009 and 2010 and reported their findings yesterday.

Some 30 companies were visited and 11 192 people tested.

Pancho Mulongeni, research assistant at PAF, said their findings indicate that HIV prevalence was highest in the manufacturing sector and lowest in the business and public administration sectors.

However, the incidence of obesity is almost twice as high in the business and public administration sectors as it is in the manufacturing sector.

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