Promote Cleaner Environment To Stem Malaria

Mr. John Baidoo, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Sustainable Development Focus Limited (SUDEF) Ghana, a Civil Society Organisation, has called on community leaders to do more in organizing communal clean-up exercises to make the environment non-habitable for disease-causing mosquitoes.

He observed that despite the huge cost incurred in Malaria control in the country, it would be difficult to stem the increasing spate of the top killer disease without a more aggressive push to ensure cleaner environments.    

Mr Baidoo said said insanitary environmental conditions, provided fertile grounds for the breeding of the disease causing female anopheles mosquito and that 90 per cent of these “maternity homes” were created by human activities.

The CEO who was speaking at a ceremony at Yamfo in the Tano-North District of the Brong-Ahafo Region to commemorate the World Malaria Day which fell on Monday, 25th of April, 2016, said the District alone recorded 150,482 in 2015 and 113,962 in 2014.

He told a gathering made up of school children and community member that out the figure 11,116 were children under five years whilst 370 were pregnant women indicating that Malaria had been a major killer of adults and children in that District and called on everyone to sleep under insecticide-treated mosquito net. 

The ceremony was held under the theme “End Malaria for Good”.   

Giving the worldwide figures, Mr. Baidoo said in 2015 Malaria accounted for 438,000 deaths worldwide, adding that 90 per cent of it occurred in the sub-Saharan Africa out of which 78 per cent were children under five years.

“Additionally, Malaria also contributed to the worsening levels of poverty in the country and it was time we did all we could to drive away Malaria”, he added.

SUDEF, is an environmentally-focused NGO operating in the Brong-Ahafo Region. 

Source: GNA