Malaria control: Health Committee embarks on oversight tour to Berekum Municipality

As part of its oversight duty ensuring value for money in the area of malaria control, the Select Committee on Health has embarked on a tour of the Berekum East constituency in the Berekum Municipal Assembly.

Chairman of the Committee, Dr. Nana Ayew Afriyie, stated the tour was to monitor how the tax payers’ money is being applied in malaria control.

According to him, in the next three weeks they have a budget to approve for the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) including funds for malaria control, which goes to a private company, which is good.

Briefing the media after touring some sites where the malaria control project is being implemented in the Berekum Municipal Assembly, Dr. Ayew lauded the idea of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) in the malaria control project

Waste management company, Zoomlion, which is partnering government for the programme is spraying stagnant waters that breed mosquitoes in105 out of the 260 districts in Ghana.

“We have mapped out regions and communities in the districts so we needed to be sure of the money that was given them, where it went and what they are doing so we have a reason to approve or disapprove of their requests when they come back to us for more resources.”

As to the level of satisfaction of the project, he stated the malaria focal person in Berekum Municipality indicates in three years after collaborating with the malaria control programme, cases of malaria in the Municipality that was 22,000 last three years, reduced to 19,000 last two years and 16,000 last year.

So there is gradual drop in the reported cases of malaria and the aspect of value for money in the overall component for the spraying and the number of people they are employing and the number of times they are supposed to do the spraying, before, during and to the end of the raining season.

“So we need to go and put pen to paper; we need to have their schedule but when we ask for it they were not able to provide it and claimed they could not find it.”

Dr. Ayew Afriyie pointed out that they are in Berekum to do their work and it appears they may be having result but scientifically the Committee needs to have a lot of things on paper and when they look at it as a metrics, they can check list it is not there.

So they are there either to improve it or to stop it and what they need is whether the communities have value for money.

After the visit the Committee is going to have a board room discussion as to the best time for the spraying to continue.

According to the malaria control program, they are supposed to be spraying from March through to October but practically they spray during the third or the fourth week of the month from June to October annually.

The spraying lasts for four weeks, which means if they go to the field today it would take another four weeks before they go back, and in between they do discilting.

The impact may be okay but the measure of the output to the needs of the objective is what they are looking for as representatives of the people.