Obuasi Ghana

A few days ago, I took a long bumpy bus ride from Accra north to Obuasi where the Ashanti Gold Mine is located. Ghana is famous for its gold and the Ashanti Gold Mine was an interesting example of a private sector initiative to control malaria.

Essentially, for the terms of a merger with Ashanti Gold and Angloashanti Gold (South African component) they promised to commit to reducing malaria in the local community. In 2005 they had a baseline of 6000 plus cases per month and daily a worker was falling sick. It is more of an investment in human resources and as they claim a legacy to the locals.

Its an integrated program with a large amount of monitoring and evaluation including 20, 000 houses sprayed twice a year. With 3 million dollars of initial infrastructure development in 40 districts, it has proven to be pretty successful. They began with a concerted effort of educating the people and taking to various community leaders. Its a sensitive issues since the workers really need to enter every corner of a person's home.

They were looking to reduce the incidence and life expectancy of the mosquito and also collected mosquitoes to understand exactly which ones are being targeted and which ones are becoming resistant to some the spraying. Based on this, they decide what kind of Mosaic group of pesticides to use next.



Overall, it seems like a good effort taken from the Private sector to fill some gaps where the public sector can not. The major con of this program is that only those living within the camps of the minors are benefiting from this. The rest of the communities and the outskirts of the mining community are still facing immense issues with Malaria.

After meeting with the Epidemiologists and Malaria team members, I took a tour of the gold mine which was pretty interesting--I suited up with a headlamp, smock, rubber boots and oxygen tank and headed down 420 meters into a cold,damp, drafty shaft. It reminded me of the Scooby Doo episodes I watched as a kid where ghosts were being chased through the railways and carts of a gold mine. They have lots of safety measures in place that ensure the safest working environment for the miners but it still seemed like a horrible job.

I asked around a little about the profits generated for the mine and how much compensation was given to those tribes who originally owned the land. This is one of the only mines that was originally mined by the locals...of course no one had any comments on the distribution of the wealth generated by this and the mining tour guides were really evading my questions--seeing that I was going underground with them, I decided to not probe too much.

Overall a very fun and interesting experience! After the mine tour I met with the mayor of Obuasi.

We then headed off to a village to hang mosquito nets and also to meet some children at a local school. The children were asking so many questions and all of them wanted to touch my hair.