News:
April 2, 2023
The programmes manager of Ghana’s national malaria control programme of the Ghana Health Service Dr. Keziah L. Malm has said Ghana is wining the fight against malaria as the number of people who die from malaria related diseases has drastically reduced.
According to her in year 2010 and 2014 the nation was counting deaths of malaria in our health facilities in thousands, but last year’s record was one hundred and fifty five (155) deaths in our health facilities.
In an interview with Ghanamps.com she further noted that in the year 2018 Ghana recorded deaths around four hundred and twenty –eight (428) hence malaria is no more in the top ten caucus of death in Ghana’s health facilities.
“But we still have challenges; we still are not where we want to be, we record high number of malaria cases in our health facilities last year, we recorded five point one million cases of malaria and that is quite a huge number”.
She further pointed out that looking at the number of school days children have to lose and parents and guidance have to lose to take care of their wards, it means as a nation we still have a lot to do as it still remains the number one cause of out- patience attendance.
As to whether the policy to push for malaria elimination is doable due to the attitude of some Ghanaians, Dr. Malm noted that, there is the motivation to push for malaria elimination agenda because it is doable.
She asserts that there is quite a number of tools that would help us in this fight of elimination agenda, stating that as they have just started, they are currently writing the strategic plan for the elimination fight. “if you look at the countries that have eliminated malaria, it just didn’t happen; it even took them some deliberate years of efforts; that is why I said it’s doable, it may be twenty or fifteen years but with deliberate efforts it can be done”.
And further pointed out that, it is not surprising that people do not know about the elimination agenda, they are still in the process of defining their strategies and plans. Once that is done then they would educate Ghanaians on what is expected for each of us to push this agenda.
But when it comes to people knowing that mosquitoes transmit malaria that is well known but the acceptance of the intervention to fight this diseases is where we need to do more, she stated.
She further recounted that on an oversight field visit by the Select Committee on health of Ghana’s Parliament to Berekum East and the Ashanti Region it came out that some things were not going on right hence the need for more to be done in the fight against malaria.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com