A multimedia computer anti-virus scan was launched in Accra on Thursday with a call for collaborative partnership between the government and network providers to accelerate the pace of Information Technology use.

Miss Christine Churcher, Minister of State for Primary, Secondary and Girl-Child Education, who made the call, said the government is determined to use information as a resource for rapid socio-economic development. Therefore, "all hands must be on deck" to protect database, she said.

The Panda Invent 3.0 ActiveScan is a programme developed in Spain that scans, detects and eliminates viruses on-line in all system components: hard disks, compressed files and incoming files from the worldwide web.

Like similar modern products, Panda ActiveScan software comes in a CD-rom for quick installation.

However, unlike other products, Panda ActiveScan automatically upgrades itself to match up with higher capacity viruses without an update by the user, thereby saving the user time and resources.

The President of Panda Software, Ghana, Leslie Osei, said his company is spending more than 160,000 dollars to provide free software to all ministries and some selected government departments this year.

Statistics show that about 7.6 million dollars worth of information is destroyed annually worldwide by viruses with 99.7 per cent of computer users being the victims.

Prominent among the world's known viruses that hit the information technology sector in recent times was the much-dreaded "I love you" e-mail virus, which destroyed billions of files.