Controversy Over Bush’s $17m Malaria Money

President George Bush left Ghana on the morning of Thursday February 21, 2008 after a historic three-day visit to Liberia. During his stay in Ghana, the Tema Motorway Extension was named after him, but before the dust settles over his departure, controversy is already raging over whether indeed he made a donation of $17m to fight malaria in Ghana. While government is telling the whole world that George Bush of USA has given Ghana $17m to fight malaria, professionals on the ground at the National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) say, it is not so. According to the Programmes Officer of the NMCP, Naa Korkor Allotey, if there was any $17m donation from Geroge Bush, then that was money allocated last December 2007 for the country’s malaria initiative and not when Bush came to Ghana this year. Speaking to Joy News, she said the money was allocated to the Programme last year to be used to provide Insecticide Treated Nets (ITNs), provide drugs, spray some houses in the north of the country, provide microscopes and reagents for labs in Ghana. Naa Korkor Allotey also said, neither she nor the NMCP is aware of any intervention in malaria research in the country. Citing some of the successes achieved by the programme over the years, she said, by using ITNs, malaria related infant mortality has been cut down by 20%. She also made a revelation that challenged long held belief that malaria carrying vectors breed in open dirty gutters. She debunked that assertion and said malaria causing mosquitoes instead, breed in relatively clean water.