#usinghana

With 2014 drawing to a close, we thought it'd be a good time to take a look back at the past year on @USEmbassyGhana. This year, @USEmbassyGhana added more than 16,700 new followers and surpassed 25,500 overall, while continuing to serve as an important tool for the US Embassy Ghana to engage with the Ghanaian people. Check out a timeline of some of the top tweets from the year, and be sure to follow @USEmbassyGhana on Twitter for news and updates from the Embassy of the United States of America in Ghana. Top 2014 Tweets

Blog Post by Bernard Nkrumah, Laboratory Advisor, CDC Ghana

Afia Ansaah, a 19-year old girl from Ghana, spent most of her free time helping her mother in their textile shop. Upon noticing some changes in Afia’s appearance, her mother suggested that she get a pregnancy test. Together they visited a local clinic, where they learned that Afia was pregnant. During her first prenatal visit, a health care worker asked Afia’s permission to test her for HIV and, while surprised, she agreed. She sat through the pre-test counseling session feeling somewhat disconnected from what the clinician was saying because she did not believe she could be HIV positive. Unfortunately, the results were positive. The good news is that Afia immediately received counseling and started on medications to prevent her from transferring HIV to her baby. Afia took her medications consistently throughout her pregnancy and, upon giving birth to her son, received the joyful news that he was healthy and HIV-negative.

Today, Afia is an HIV Ambassador at her local clinic, where she counsels young women in similar situations, encouraging them to begin and maintain a treatment regimen so that they, too, may deliver an HIV-negative child. The happy outcome of Afia’s story – and those of many other pregnant women -- would not have been possible without early access to accurate, reliable laboratory services.

The rate of HIV rapid testing has skyrocketed in recent years – up from 1.9 million tests in 2004 to nearly 58 million in 2013 – increasing the urgency for accurate and reliable laboratory services. There are currently over 250 public sector laboratories in Ghana, none of which are yet accredited to an international standard.  To respond to this critical need, CDC, in collaboration with the WHO Regional Office for Africa (WHO-AFRO) and 12 African governments, launched and implemented the first African laboratory accreditation program to provide training and expand testing capacity in resource-limited settings.  The Strengthening Laboratory Management toward Accreditation (SLMTA) program uses an innovative, stepwise approach that enables immediate and measurable improvement toward accreditation.  

Posted by Dr. Sureyya E. Hornston, DrMedSci, MPH USAID President's Malaria Initiative(PMI) Adviser, USAID Ghana.

I work in Ghana as USAID Malaria Adviser for the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), providing technical assistance to National Malaria Control Program (NMCP) and helping to manage PMI’s malaria control efforts in Ghana.  While malaria is an all too often known life occurrence here in Ghana, World Malaria Day gives us a chance to underscore the facts underlying the disease and efforts undertaken to address it.

Malaria is a disease that is transmitted only by female Anopheles mosquitos.  Ghana’s entire population is at risk, but malaria rates are lower in urban areas, plus there are seasonal and geographic variations in transmission.  Although malaria morbidity continues to be high in Ghana, I am happy to report that it is no longer the leading cause of death in the country.  There is reduction in malaria case fatality in children under-five years, reduction in deaths attributable to malaria in health facilities, and reduction in deaths among pregnant women.

                                                Children under an ITN distributed by  PMI

The Ministry of Health, the Ghana Health Service, and NMCP have forged a strong program using resources from the national health budget and multi-donor budget support. The national malaria control strategy in Ghana follows WHO recommendations, focused on four proven interventions:     

Insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) or long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs), distributed free or highly subsidized;

Indoor residual spraying (IRS) with insecticides, applied in targeted districts;

Intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy (IPTp), provided during antenatal care;

Artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACTs), for prompt and effective treatment of malaria.

To support Ghana’s national strategy, the U.S. Government is providing technical assistance and life-saving commodities through the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI), an initiative led by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented together with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).  The goal of PMI is to reduce malaria-related deaths by 50 percent in 19 countries in Africa that have a high burden of malaria by expanding coverage of the four highly effective malaria prevention and treatment measures discussed above. 

In 2013, PMI donated 2.6 million long-lasting insecticide treated nets (LLINs) in Ghana, supported community mobilization and mass media campaigns to sustain and increase the use of these nets, and helped NMCP make important strides in strengthening routine distribution systems for LLINs. Continuous distribution in primary schools,Antenatal Clinics (ANC), and as part oftheExpanded Programs on Immunization (EPI) in Child Welfare Clinics (CWC) will help sustain the gains made through universal coverage campaigns held from 2010 to 2012. Last year, PMI donated 3 million Rapid Diagnostic Tests and close to 2 million doses of Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) to strengthen proper diagnosis and treatment of malaria.

PMI has been supporting indoor residual spraying (IRS) since 2008 and sprayed over 1.8 million rooms. In 2013, PMI sprayed almost 200,000 rooms with insecticides, protecting over 500,000 people, among them almost 12,000 pregnant women and over 100,000 children.  PMI also supports the development of national databases that track types of mosquitos and insecticide resistance.  All of these efforts bring results. According to a recent study in Northern Ghana, malaria parasites in blood and fever episodes among children under five fell by 50 percent, thanks to PMI’s efforts. This is very gratifying to me and my colleague Dr. Philip Ricks, the Centers for Disease Control Resident Malaria Adviser here in Ghana. 

To strengthen health systems, PMI supported Ghana’s Food and Drug Authority (FDA) in monitoring the quality of antimalarial drugs, and provided technical assistance on WHO prequalification standards for screening these drugs. PMI will continue to work together with the Ministry of Health in the coming years in all of the areas mentioned, including providing commodities, improving the tracking and distribution of commodities, training providers to ensure proper diagnosis and treatment of malaria,  and supporting the development of strong national health information system and other databases. 

Together, we must join efforts to dispel the common myths about how malaria spreads (e.g. working under sun, eating hot foods, dirty environment.) We call on all Ghanaians to continue sleeping under ITNs every night and all through the night to protect themselves from mosquito bites and have a restful night.  In addition, we all have a role to play in requesting that clinicians and other health care providers properly diagnose malaria using rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) or microscopy rather than using their clinical judgment alone and treat with  Artemisinin-based Combination Therapy (ACT) only when the RDT test yields a positive result for malaria. 

Posted by Kwabena Akuamoah-Boateng, Social Media Assets Manager

  Often, we hear in the news of foreign ships docking at the Tema or Sekondi ports. What we don't get is what really happens when they are here, the impact and why they were here in the first place. This past week, I was privileged to be on one such ship: USNS Spearhead. 

U.S. & Ghana Team Pose For A Group Photo Behind USNS Spearhead –April 4, 2014

As a Ghanaian working as the Social Media Assets Manager for the U.S. Embassy in Accra, I have covered a couple of workshops between U.S. military and West African countries, and I have always wondered what happens outside the classroom. My time on USNS Spearhead gave me a great insight worth sharing.

The ship was in Ghana as part of  African Maritime Law Enforcement Partnership (AMLEP),  partnering with Ghana to find potential violations in its waters. If you haven’t paid attention to the growing piracy, trafficking and illegal fishing in the Gulf of Guinea, then you should. There are growing violations, which countries should collaborate on to fight against, as some ships have committed similar violations in other countries’ waters.

Ordinarily you would expect such joint exercises to be between the US Navy, US Coast Guards and Ghana Navy but this was a little different. This one also included 6 men from the newly formed Ghana Marine Police, Fisheries Commission and the Narcotics Control Board as well as Naval officers from Nigeria and Togo, who were also on board to learn and share their experiences. 

On our second day patrolling Ghana’s territorial and exclusive waters at about 35 nautical miles off the coast of Winneba, we encountered a vessel fishing illegally without a license and using nets that were below internationally approved or Ghana approved sizes for commercial fishing. The story was the same the next day; another fishing vessel without a license and fishing with small nets. The team of Ghana Navy, Marine Police and Fisheries Commission with support from the US Coast Guard boarded the vessel, conducted some inspections and arrested the vessel.

It was heartwarming to see how simple technologies like the mobile phone were being used. After the debriefings, I would often spot the Ghanaian Navy officers refer to the Fisheries Act 2002 on their mobile phones. I digress but as a Social Media Manager, it got me thinking how Ghana could employ mobile technologies in fighting crime on the sea.

  U.S. Coast Guard & Ghana Navy Officer Overlook Juvenile Fish On Arrested –April 2, 2014

I saw really small fishing canoes deep in the Gulf of Guinea and the song "Letter to the Government (International Fisherman)" kept ringing in my ears. Maybe it hasn't struck countries on the Gulf of Guinea yet but illegal fishing is happening on a large scale and it's about time nations collaborate more to save our dwindling fish stock.  

I will ask the hard question here. Just as with illegal gold mining (galamsey), are Ghanaians fronting for foreigners as owners of these illegal vessels? 

Being on the embarkment, I have come to appreciate even more the work of seamen and fishermen. Waking up to no land in sight made me homesick. Being on the sea is not as easy as it seems. Learning how to walk and not get seasick from the rolling of the Spearhead was quite a challenge. I can only be thankful for all the advice I got before the embarkment. Let me share some advice with you. Make sure you carry some saltine crackers and some Advomine.

If there is a lesson I learnt, it would be cooperation; cooperation between countries and cooperation between agencies. I kept nodding at how the Ghanaians shared information and tactics.