Press Release
July 12, 2021
To support Botswana’s HIV response and strengthen its ability to provide comprehensive health services to Batswana, the U.S. government partnered with the government of Botswana to implement the Determined, Resilient, Empowered, AIDS-Free, Mentored and Safe (DREAMS) HIV prevention program that targets vulnerable adolescent girls and young women with a comprehensive package of preventative services.
The U.S. Mission in Botswana worked with the National AIDS and Health Promotion Agency (NAHPA) to develop the National DREAMS Data Base (NDDB). This $300,00.00 project was funded by the U.S. Mission’s Presidents’ Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) office.
The DREAMS program provides a combination of biomedical, structural, economic, educational, and social protection interventions to vulnerable girls and women aged 9-24 years old to reduce their chances of HIV infection. The program started in the districts of Kweneng East and Gaborone, but has since expanded to six additional districts – Southern, Kgatleng, Mahalapye, Bobirwa, Serowe, and North East. The DREAMS program was designed to provide girls and women a variety of preventative HIV related services, and the new database will help keep track of the program’s progress.
To develop the database, the U.S. Mission’s USAID office provided technical and financial support to the DREAMS Coordination Unit at NAHPA to develop an electronic system that allows NAHPA to adequately capture DREAMS services and their beneficiaries. This new DREAMS data system captures all these services and tracks the location where recipients received the services, which allows service providers to streamline and to coordinate additional future services. To date over 100 DREAMS affiliated staff members have been trained to use the system covering all the districts administrating the program. The new DREAMS system will benefit various actors and stakeholders – especially program managers and implementers within the government and civil society sector. The data collected will not only inform program planners on the numbers of girls and women reached through the program but will also help administrators to better identify particularly vulnerable girls and women in specific districts and provide the resources needed to expand the program’s reach.
For additional information, please contact the U.S. Embassy Press Office at 373-2419 or PASGaborone@state.gov.
