ExxonMobil Foundation provides $500,000 for malaria diagnosis in Ghana

ExxonMobil Foundation has announced a donation of $500,000 to establish a malaria diagnostic laboratory for the HopeXchange Medical Center at its health facility in Kumasi.

The funds will provide HopeXchange, an institution dedicated to malaria prevention and treatment, with resources to improve malaria diagnosis.

A statement by the Foundation released in Accra said the center will also serve as a site for clinical trials of anti-malarial drugs using internationally recognized best clinical practices.

“Improved malaria diagnosis is critical to decreasing mortality rates of this preventable disease,” said Suzanne McCarron, President of ExxonMobil Foundation.

“We are committed to fighting malaria, and with our support, the Center’s new diagnostic laboratory will make life-saving treatments more accessible and readily available,” she added.

Since 2000, the Foundation has committed more than $100 million for programmes to fight malaria. It supports a wide range of prevention, treatment and advocacy programmes to end deaths from malaria.

On World Malaria Day 2011 ExxonMobil partnered African Media and Malaria Research Network (AMMREN) and NETSFORLIFE to donate 1,000 bed nets at Ahwiam in the Greater Accra region..

Though there have been improvements in diagnosis and treatment over the past decade, malaria remains a global threat affecting millions of people. An estimated 800,000 people die every year from malaria, most of them children under the age of five. The disease accounts for about 40 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s health expenditures.

By Eunice Menka