The WHO Country Cooperation Strategy III (CCS III) represents the medium-term
strategy for the work of WHO in Botswana for the period 2014-2020. It is anchored
on the 12th General Programme of Work (GPW 2014-2019) which is the strategic
vision for the work of the WHO Secretariat globally as well as the Ministry of Health’s
Integrated Health Services Plan (IHSP): a strategy for changing the health sector for
a healthy Botswana (2010-2020). The vision articulated in the IHSP is to provide an
enabling environment whereby all the people living in Botswana have the opportunity to
achieve and maintain the highest level of health and well-being. The document is built
around 6 goals as follows:
1. The goal of service delivery is the attainment of universal coverage of a high-quality
package of essential health services;
2. The goal for human resources is ensuring an adequate, motivated, and skilled
health work force is in the right places and at the right time;
3. The health-financing goals are three-fold: to raise sufficient resources to ensure that
all citizens have access to a range of cost effective interventions at an affordable
price; to ensure financial incentives and systems are in place to deliver services
efficiently with a particular focus on the needs of the vulnerable groups;
4. The goal for improving procurement and logistics is to ensure the effective and
efficient delivery of health services to all people living in Botswana;
5. The health information and research goal is to create an enabling environment for
efficient monitoring and evaluation of the implementation and achievements of the
integrated health service plan and to provide the basis for evidence-based decisionmaking;
6. The leadership and management goal is to ensure strategic guidance and oversight
in the regulation and implementation of all health related services.
The CCS will therefore provide a medium for responding to the goals identified by
the Government of Botswana, acknowledging that as an upper middle-income country
(MIC), Botswana will provide the bulk of its own resources for implementation of
programmes, while partners bring technical expertise to the table. Where the country
office has limitations in terms of human resources with the requisite expertise to answer
to the country needs, the other levels of the organization will be mobilized to provide
the necessary support. The UN system, in its analysis of the MIC status of Botswana,
has identified its role as that of upstream advocacy and normative processes rather
than implementation as the UN endeavours to Deliver as One, while still supporting the
country to get better value for its money. Principles of equity, gender and human rights
will be followed.