develoPPP health, a Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) health programme, has launched two projects to help manage the pandemic within organisations and communities at large.
One of the projects, dubbed ‘Pandemic Management in Catchment Communities in Times of COVID-19 & Beyond’, is targetted at the extractive communities of Western and Ashanti Regions and seeks to build economic and health resilience. This project is in partnership with major mining firms including Asanko Gold, AngloGold Ashanti businesses in Obuasi and Iduapriem, and Golden Star Resources.
Giving an overview of the project, which is already underway, Technical Advisor for develoPPP health-GIZ, Mary Bonsu, elaborated key objectives the project will seek to achieve.
“Currently, 60,000 community members have been enrolled into the National Health insurance Scheme (NHIS) and are active in usage and renewal. 10,000 catchment community members have taken a test to determine their health literacy including COVID-19, and 70 percent of them have increased their score by 20 percent between beginning and end of the project,” she said.
Furthermore, some 150,000 community members have received medical care, including vaccinations and medical screening, as part of this project.
The second project, which is for non-extractive communities and dubbed ‘Comprehensive Pandemic Management for Employees, Families and Communities’, has Blue Skies, Appointed Time Printing, Coca Cola, Kasapreko and Golden Exotic Company Limited as its partners.
Ms. Bonsu explained that both projects will be implemented concurrently for at least three years, under development partnerships funded by the German government through the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and implemented by GIZ through the develoPPP programme.
Director of Public Health at Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, bemoaned the Ghanaian populace’s hesitancy to get vaccinated, and stressed that if strict measures are not in place to get all vaccinated it will defeat the country’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic,
“It must be noted that vaccine hesitancy is becoming a challenge against achieving the needed population immunity, despite the recent improvement of vaccine availability. The threat of conspiracy theories, particularly using social media, is an issue that needs to be addressed,” he said.
