Global Fund to subside malaria drugs

Takoradi, Aug. 28, GNA - The Global Fund is to subside anti-malaria medications that have been recommended by the Ministry of Health, Mr Kwame Dzudzarli Gakpey, Communication Officer of the National Malaria Control Programmed has said.

He was speaking at a one-day Malaria Reporting Training Workshop on Saturday for Journalists organized by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) at Takoradi.

Mr Gakpey said medications to be subsidized under the Affordable Medicines Facility for Malaria included Artesunate Amodiaquine and Artmeter-Lumfantrin.

He said the objective for subsidizing the medications is to make them affordable and available to the public.

Mr Gakpey said the two medications would be sold for less than one Ghana Cedis in chemical and pharmacy shops throughout the country.

He said the medications would be of good quality and would carry logos to indicate that they were subsidzed.

Mr Gakpey said the Global Fund would bear 95 per cent of the cost of anti-malaria drugs prescribed to patients.

Opening the workshop, Dr Linda Vanotoo, Western Regional Director of Health, said malaria caused by mosquitoes, has been wrongly conceived as a spiritual disease by some people.

Dr Vanotoo said such misconceptions hamper efforts to reduce the incidence of disease.

She urged Journalists to assist the GHS to educate the public about the disease and correct misconceptions about it.

Dr Vanotoo said children less than five years and pregnant women are the most vulnerable to the disease.