The Botha Buthe Senior Nursing Officer responsible for the center Sister Moliehi Khothatso said the previous ART center was too small and therefore patients had to wait outside for services.

Sister khothatso therefore thanked the government through ministry of health for initiating the construction of the infrastructure and thanked the Global Fund for providing grants (R5) to make the construction a reality.

The building is comprised of four doctor consultation rooms, examination rooms, health education room, waiting room, staff kitchen, registry, boardroom, counseling and testing rooms, pharmacy, store as well as patients and staff bathrooms.

“We are grateful for the building because in the past we were in small space that causes overcrowding of patients and staff but now each staff has its own consulting room and patients have enough waiting room to accommodate all patients at the center,” she added.

“Thank very much and we promise that the infrastructure and medical equipment provided will help us to improve service delivery in the health sector not only in Botha Buthe but the country as a whole,” she added.

The BB ART staff was acknowledging the Ministry of health and Global Fund Coordinating Unit (GFCU) of the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning during the field visit of Director of HIV and AIDS in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare Ms. Maud Boikanyo and GFCU National Coordinator Mrs. Nkhala Sefako on May 8, 2009.

The visit aimed at assessing the infra structure and services at the center before GFCU officially hand-over the center to the Ministry of Health (sub recipient).

The construction of new ART centers were initiated by the Ministry of Health under Round 5 grant that focuses mainly on HIV and AIDS where the plan was to construct four new ART centers by the end of phase 1. To date one ART centre in Leribe was constructed and is currently fully operational with support from UNICEF while the remaining two Butha-Buthe and Paray hospitals were constructed by the Global Fund grants. The fourth ART center could not be constructed due to limited funds available, and fortunately, the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has to take over to support the construction of more than 140 health facilities country wide including extension of hospital buildings for provision of ART.

In general Round 5 activities emphasized on scaling up of HIV and AIDs prevention, care and treatment interventions and creation of a viable health system for their implementation.

The objective of the whole grant program is to expand and strengthen HIV testing and Counseling (HTC) and provide post-test care and support services as well as to provide quality treatment of HIV, STI and opportunistic infections and strengthen a health system that supports the scaling up of coordinated HIV, TB and STI interventions.

Thus implementation of this grant was stretched across all sectors and help built capacity to engage in scaling up of the multi-sectoral national response, through the provision of quarter salary incentives for health workers, provide technical assistance, train community-based health workers and recruit new professional and non-professional community based cadres to assist in strengthening health services delivery from health facilities to the village level.

During the roll-out of ART in the face of tremendous demand, most of the sites were over- crowded and some sites had small space for provision of services. Botha Buthe hospital was one of the site that was allocated very small space for full implementation of all integrated services at one small building.

Therefore the new ART centers were proposed, approved and budgeted under Round 5. The construction of Botha Buthe ART center was completed at the end of 2008 while the office furniture arrived early 2009. At the moment the center waits for medical equipment whose procurement are already in process and expect delivery from suppliers before end of May 2009.

The Round 5 grants implementation started in 2006 to 2011 with the budget worth USD 40,346,059. So far the performance ranking of this grant is ‘B1’ or good.