In deed the call by members of the Asante Akim South District Malaria Advocacy Team (DMAT) to all Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to make malaria a development priority is timely.

This is because malaria remains the single biggest development challenge to a developing country like Ghana. Of the top ten illnesses reported at the country’s health institutions malaria accounts for about 30%.

According to figures from the Ministry of Health, the government spent about $760 million on malaria treatment in 2006 alone.

This makes a pressing case for stakeholders to put pragmatic steps in place to ensure that all the talks about controlling malaria we have heard over the years are translated into reality.

The District Assemblies should be given the financial and logistical support to tackle malaria at the grassroots. The two ministries that should be at the head of this decentralized fight against malaria should be the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education. But the question is to what extent has the government devolved the powers to these regional and district offices of the two ministries?

Apart from education, it is the opinion of this newspaper that, the fight against malaria should be at the top the agenda of the MMDAs, which should devote a chunk of the common fund to support “roll-back malaria programmes” in their respective areas.

Although it is mandatory under the guidelines for the disbursement of the Fund for the Assemblies to release 0.5 per cent of their share to help to fight the disease, most of them have over the years failed to do this.

It is time for all stakeholders to join hands and impress on the government to make the money available to help bring down the incidence of malaria, which continues to kill hundreds of children each year.

Let it not be lost on us that a malaria-free nation is a potentially rich nation, whose workforce will always be at work and increase productivity. In this vein this newspaper also urges the government to endeavour to combat the threat of fake malaria drugs being imported into the country

A new report from the International Policy Network released recently says fake tuberculosis and malaria drugs alone are estimated to kill 700,000 people a year. The report points out that nearly half the drugs sold in Ghana, Nigeria, Angola, Burundi, and the Congo are substandard.

These dodgy drugs result in unnecessary death and increased levels of drug resistance.”It was estimated earnings from the fake drugs industry yielded $60bn annually in 2004. Is our government listening.”

Source: Public Agenda