Health News of Monday, 1 September 2008

Source: GNA

NGO urges others to get involved in making Ghana malaria-free

Donkorkrom (E/R), Aug. 31, GNA - Mr Kwabena Osei Bonsu, Head of 'Add Your Voice Now', a non-governmental organization championing the cause of malaria eradication in the country, has called on other development agencies to join the process in order to get rid of the disease by the year 2015.

Quoting the World Health Organisation, Mr Bonsu said one person dies from malaria in every 30 seconds, and that Ghana might lose its future leaders if nothing was done about the current situation. Mr Osei Bonsu made the call when his organisation donated 1,000 treated mosquito nets to pregnant women from 10 communities in the Afram

Plains District on Sunday. The beneficiary communities were Donkorkrom, Adawso, Ekye, Mame Krobo, Tease, Teacher Kope, Dinkope, Koranteng, Samanhyia and Ntona Abomaa. Mr Osei Bonsu said his organisation had so far distributed more than 3,000 treated mosquito nets to communities in Eastern, Greater Accra and Volta Regions adding that other regions would also receive supplies soon. He said recently crowned IBF Welterweight champion Joshua Clottey and Mr Cecil Jones Attuquayefio, Technical Director of Liberty Professionals football club and Mrs Safura Mohammed, a businesswoman, had been made ambassadors of the campaign against malaria and that other sporting personalities and business women would join the crusade soon. Nana Danso Ababio II, Chief of Pitiku, urged the communities to practice environmental cleanliness, which he said, was the safest way of preventing the disease.