Public Agenda (Accra)
Ama Achiaa Amankwah
9 May 2005
Accra — Anglogold Ashanti aims to reduce the number of malaria cases in the Obuasi community by 50%, a year after the implementation of a residual house spraying by the company, which will commence in September this year.
Ashanti also aspires to reduce the number of working days lost by its employees due to malaria, from the current 3,600 per month to less than 1,000 days per month, among it's workforce of 6,500 at Obuasi.
Malaria remains the most significant public health threat for Anglogold Ashanti's operations in Ghana, Mali, Tanzania and Guinea.
However, not only does the disease have a significant impact on the productivity of employees, but also on the functioning of entire communities in these regions.
The group further aims to implement integrated malaria control programmes in each of these regions.
An amount of $1.6 million is projected for the programme, which comprises four elements, namely vector control, which involves indoor house spraying of all the estimated 40,000 houses in Obuasi with an organophosphate insecticide.
The second component, disease management, will look at effective treatment protocols which comply with national guidelines that have been introduced.
The third element, surveillance and monitoring, involves a malaria information system that will measure programme outcomes in the light of established standards and will consist of database containing information on insecticide resistance and geographic systems, among others.
The final segment, which is information, education, communication and health promotion, includes spraying teams and medical staff, who have been trained to provide health information to the general public on aspects of malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
In anticipation of this programme, Professor Richard Hunt, of the National Institute of Communicable Diseases in South Africa, a world authority on insecticide resistance, was contracted to perform a study that would inform the way in which the malaria control programme is structured.
The Obuasi mine hospital was reporting an average of 6000 malaria cases per month, 2000 of whom are employees at the time of the merger between Anglogold and Ashanti.
An average of about 20% of the workforce is believed to be afflicted with malaria at any time and the average time off work for this condition is between two and three days.
If these trends are extended to the broader Obuasi community of 180,000 people, the problem can be seen as immense. Anglogold Ashanti hopes to use the experiences learnt from the proposed malaria programme to manage the disease at other operations in Iduapriem, Bibiani and Wassa West, all in the western region of Ghana.
According to the Anglogold Health Service Manager for Africa region, Dr. Piet van Wyk, malaria is the single most important disease to impact on Anglogold Ashanti's operations in West Africa.
He says the burden of malaria is reflected in increased morbidity, mortality and absenteeism in the workforce, as well as decrease in productivity and morale.
"An effective malaria control programme at Obuasi will hold benefits not only for employees in Obuasi, but for society at large. It will have a positive impact on the health status, treatment costs, school attendance and productivity within the community'.
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