The Parliamentary Select Committee on Health has toured some mosquito breeding-sites in the Bono Region – calling on Zoomlion Ghana Limited (ZGL) to step-up its larval control operation targetted at immature mosquitoes to help fight malaria in the country.
“Despite the gradual reduction of malaria cases, in 2020 the Berekum municipality recorded malaria cases of 19,000 – which slightly went up to 21,000 in 2021 and then reduced to 16,000 in 2022 respectively; and we believe a lot of work needs to be done as well,” chair of the Parliamentary Health Committee, Dr. Nana Ayew Afriyie, said during an inspection tour of some breeding sites in the Berekum municipality, Bono Region, on Wednesday, March 1, 2023.
The tour enabled the committee to get first-hand information about the larval control spraying operation by the Vector Control Services of ZGL, which targets immature mosquitoes that may be developing in stagnant water.
The visit was also necessary because it will inform members of the committee in their deliberations to approve or otherwise the project’s budget.
Addressing journalists after an inspection tour of some breeding sites in the Berekum municipality, chair of the Parliamentary Health Committee, Dr. Ayew Afriyie, said the committee decided to embark on the regional tour to ascertain the work’s level of progress.
“As the people’s representatives, we are here to provide oversight and see how the taxpayer’ funds are being applied when it gets to larvicidal control of malaria,” he said.
“We have a budget to approve. Before we approve the budget we needed to see a few things, and that included this larvicidal or vector control of malaria. We more often than not in the year will make an approval, and that approval goes to a private company – which is good. It is a PPP, which is a modern trend of financing health practice that we all agree on,” he further explained.
Furthermore, Dr. Afriyie – who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Effiduase Asokoroe, charged Zoomlion to involve more staff from the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP).
He underscored that the NCMP is a part of Zoomlion’s larval control operation, adding that though the NMCP is to monitor the activities of Zoomlion “it looks like there is a disengagement between the NMCP and the company”.
He made it clear that it is the committee’s responsibility to ensure value for money in the awarding of these contracts to private entities.
“So, we may be having results but scientifically we need to put a lot of things on paper; so that when we come in here we can look at it as a matrix and checklist it.…but in all, we need the community to have value for money,” he insisted.
However, Dr. Ayew Afriyie pointed out that there are issues with the project which need to be addressed.
These, he mentioned, include some of the mapped-out breeding sites not receiving continuous and effective spraying; and also the need for Zoomlion to have a schedule for the exercise.
The Ranking Member on the Committee and MP for Juaboso, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, asked Zoomlion to critically look at the strength of its spraying workforce and their welfare, indicating that this can have an adverse impact on the project’s output.
The Malaria Focal Person in Berekum municipality, Joseph Gyebi-Buaben, revealed that there has been a gradual reduction of malaria cases in the municipality over the last three years (2020, 2021 and 2022).
Giving the breakdown, he disclosed that in 2020 the Berekum Municipal recorded malaria cases of 19,000 – which slightly went up to 21,000 in 2021 and then reduced to 16,000 in 2022.
The General Manager (GM) of Vector Control Services of ZGL, Reverend Ebenezer Kwame Addae, said they work in collaboration with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) and NMCP, which is the supervising agency.
“What we do includes mapping mosquito breeding sites, after which we move in to do larviciding – the application of Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis (Bti) to kill all the larvae t we see in the stagnant water so that they will not grow to become adult mosquitoes,” he elucidated.
According to him, the Bti they use has a 28-day residual period, but added that in the event of heavy rain “we go back and reapply the larvicide”.
“We operate with a minimum of 20 sprayers in most of the districts, albeit there are some districts which have between 30 and 40 sprayers depending on size of the district or municipality, and some even have 50,” he revealed.
Rev Addae, who is also in charge of the National Mosquito Programme (NMP), contended that reducing mosquito populations requires a collective strategy.
“In controlling mosquitoes, it takes a collective strategy. It is not only one strategy that we use; what we do is to try and control the larvae, and you know there are so many sources which serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes,” he noted.
He said his outfit undertakes its operations in the districts with Malaria Focal Persons (MFPs), as well as health and environmental officers.
“We do it in a scientific manner by first mapping the areas to know that ‘yes, it is feasible to apply the larvicide’. If we map and we don’t see any larvae, we don’t work there. So we move from breeding site to breeding to site; that is, where there’s stagnant water – and when we get there, we involve the community in the exercise, too,” he stated.
He said the programme has been quite successful, though he admitted that other interventions had also played a part.
“And this is evident in the statistics of reduced malaria cases in the Berekum municipality as provided by the Malaria Focal Person in the Berekum municipality,” he emphasised.
Rev. Addae used the opportunity to advise Ghanaians to get involved in reducing the mosquito populations in the country, “by ensuring that we keep our environs clean and avoid the creation of stagnant water”.
