The retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa last Friday visited the offices of AngloGold Ashanti to learn at first-hand the company’s malaria control programme, which has significantly reduced malarial cases in the Obuasi municipality.

The Archbishop, who has dedicated his life to combating malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and racial discrimination in Africa and the world over, was overwhelmed with the company’s malarial programme and urged other companies to emulate AngloGold Ashanti to drive the disease from Ghana and other African countries.

He said to build a happier and healthy people and workforce “we have to collectively invest in the people as the company is doing.” He also commended the foresight of Ghanaian leaders such as Dr Kwame Nkrumah and Dr Kwegyir Aggrey for their foresight in providing leadership in their time to educate and unify their people and urged Africans to work hand-in-hand with companies to develop their people.

Dr Toby Bradbury, Chief Executive Anglogold Ashanti, Ghana gave a background of the company.AngloGold Ashanti is a leading mining company with its roots firmly anchored in Africa. It was created in 2004, as a result of the combination of the assets of the former AngloGold of South Africa and the former Ashanti Goldfields Company of Ghana.

He noted that the company was a global organisation employing about 60,000 people with its principal commodity and a sizable number of the employees is Ghanaians. Dr. Bradbury noted that AngloGold Ashanti aspired to be the leading mining company and “we have core values.”

Among these are the health and safety of our people, the dignity and respect that we have for each other, and our intention that every community in which we operate must be better off for us having been there. Dr. Bradbury said “one of our key health focus has been on South Africa’s number one public health threats – HIV/AIDS.

That is AngloGold Ashanti’s top public health focus in South Africa also, and our HIV/AIDS awareness, education and treatment programmes extend to all our operations in Africa including Ghana,” adding that here in Ghana, “our key focus area is the eradication of malaria which is endemic in the country and represents most serious threat to health and a major cause of mortality among women and children.”

He said the AGA malarial control programme had captured the imagination of keen watchers locally and internationally by making significant improvements in the lives of Ghanaians. “We are faced with a situation in which malaria was the main source of absenteeism of employees, market women and schoolchildren.

Thousands of people, especially pregnant mothers and children below the age of 5 years, came down with the disease every year. At our mine hospital alone, we were recording 7000 cases a month and, as we know, malaria is a preventable disease.

In 2005, AngloGold Ashanti launched a programme to tackle malaria at Obuasi. The programme was launched with a budget of $3 million with the aim of reducing the incidence of malaria in Obuasi by 50 per cent in two years.