NGOs strategise to reduce malaria impact

The Ghana Coalition of Non-Governmental Organisations in Malaria (GCNM) has wrapped up a two-day workshop in which key issues in repositioning the network to become one of Ghana’s leading network organisations were addressed.

Speaking at the meeting in Koforidua, Professor Samuel Ato Duncan, National President of the Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Malaria, stated that the GCNM provided the necessary skills for member organisations as they built their capacity to go into communities to carry out malaria education and sensitisation programmes.

Therefore, he stated that the workshop aimed to document evidence-based malaria-reduction strategies that could be fed into the global fund strategy and the National Malaria Control Programme strategic framework in Ghana and Africa.

Professor Duncan, who is also the President and Founder of the Centre for Awareness of Global Peace Mission and the COA Healthcare Centre, said: “We work together as one people with love and dedication to achieve our common goal, where all the Civil Society Organisations working on malaria could be strengthened in capacity and financially to combat the incidence of malaria in Ghana, using the best strategies that could be replicated in other countries.”

He said the Centre for Awareness of Global Peace Mission would work with and support the GCNM’s local NGOs to strengthen their capacity to deliver, particularly in terms of resource mobilization.

The GCNM is a network of individual non-governmental organisations that collaborate with relevant stakeholders to reduce the impact of malaria in Ghanaian society, particularly among children under the age of five, pregnant women, and other vulnerable groups.

Malaria is a potentially fatal disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to humans via the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitos.