Ghana Related News

The Promoting Malaria Prevention and Treatment (ProMPT) Ghana project celebrated successful completion of its mission with government and local partners Friday, after four years of strengthening Ghana’s efforts to tackle malaria. ProMPT’s support made significant and broad-based contributions to the achievements of the country’s National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP), part of the Ghana Health Service (GHS). These contributions include supporting the NMCP to improve malaria prevention and treatment, mobilize communities to take action to protect themselves and others, and spread evidence-based practices across the country. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), ProMPT was managed by URC with its partners the Population Council and Malaria Consortium.

URC has released a request for proposals (RFP) for its Africa Child and Family Initiative under the USAID Health Care Improvement Project. Please visit http://www.hciproject.org/africa-child-family-initiative for more information.

Focusing on the theme, “Sustain Gains, Save Lives: Invest in Malaria,” this year’s World Malaria Day, held annually on April 25, recognizes the decade’s achievements in reducing malaria deaths and the importance of sustaining this progress. According to the World Health Organization, deaths caused by malaria fell by a quarter globally over the last decade, and by more than one-third in the African region. Yet an estimated 650,000 people died as a result of malaria in 2010, most of them young children in Africa. University Research Co., LLC (URC) supports efforts to combat malaria in Africa by helping to prevent and control malaria in Ghana and to improve diagnosis and management of malaria cases in young children in Tanzania.

Ms. Katharine McPhee, star of the TV show Smash and an American Idol runner-up, recently visited the Promoting Malaria Prevention and Treatment (ProMPT) project in Ghana, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). ProMPT, managed by University Research Co., LLC, is working to promote malaria prevention and treatment throughout Ghana. Ms. McPhee is a spokesperson for Malaria No More (MNM), an international non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to supplying everyone at risk for malaria in Africa with a mosquito net and to sustainably ending malaria deaths in Africa by 2015.

Over the past month, nearly 15,000 trained community volunteers visited each household in the Ashanti region of Ghana—from the densely-populated city of Kumasi to remote villages in the region’s forested areas— to register nearly every household in the region of five million people for free, long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs). Registration is the first step in a distribution campaign in which more than 40,000 volunteers will deliver and hang nets in the registered households. Carrying out such a massive effort requires careful orchestration of multiple activities at all levels of the health system and coordination of numerous groups, including donor and implementing agencies, civil society organizations, and community leaders.  Fortunately, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) Promoting Malaria Prevention and Treatment (ProMPT) project, funded by the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), worked with Ghana’s National Malaria Control Programme  (NMCP) to develop an innovative model that ensures that all these actors work together for a common cause.

“It feels good under the treated net,” sang Nana Boro, Ghanaian music icon, to an audience of celebrities, diplomats, and malaria control experts at Citizen Kofi, a popular entertainment venue in Accra, the capital city. The June 15 event marked the launch of a multi-media campaign promoting malaria prevention interventions as “life style products.”

URC is contributing to the global effort to reduce malaria deaths to zero by 2015 by scaling up best practices in malaria control and bringing together malaria control partners in countries across Asia and Africa.  Working in collaboration with national governments, non-governmental organizations, the private sector, and communities, URC is addressing the barriers to universal access to prevention and case management and making it possible for women, men, and children to protect themselves and quickly access quality care when needed.

The Alliance for Malaria Prevention named Ghana Lead Innovator for long lasting insecticidal mosquito nets (LLINs) distribution over the past year. The award recognized Ghana’s pioneering role in national door-to-door LLIN distribution. The National Malaria Control Programme worked closely with Promoting Malaria Prevention and Treatment Project (ProMPT), a program managed by University Research Co., LLC and funded by the US Agency for International Development .

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) asked a URC-managed project Promoting Malaria Prevention and Treatment (ProMPT) to assist with emergency distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets. ProMPT had been working with Ghana’s National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) to strengthen malaria prevention and control and scale up successful malaria interventions.

URC now leads the Integrated Malaria Support Program (IMSP), part of the President’s Malaria Initiative to strengthen malaria prevention and control in Ghana. URC will manage this USAID-funded project in collaboration with the Malaria Consortium and The Population Council.