Sierra Leone was named alongside
Ivory Coast and Cameroon as new entrants into the President’s Malaria
Initiative (PMI) run by the White House. The PMI seeks to eradicate the
parasitic disease in Africa and Aisa.
A joint statement by the Ministry of
Health and Sanitation (MoHS), and the US embassy in Freetown last week said the
move comes in handy for the Sierra Leone government in its drive to tackle
Malaria which is over 40 percent prevalent in the country.
“The inclusion of Sierra Leone in
the PMI will be a realization of the request by His Excellency, the President
Ernest bai Koroma during a White House meeting in 2013 with President Barrack
Obama,” the MoHS said in the statement.
The PMI is a bipartisan effort
initiated by President George W. Bush and
it intends to reduce the burden of
malaria in Africa and Southeast Asia. Its immediate target is to have nearly 70
million more at-risk people have access to insecticide-treated nets,
anti-malarial drugs, and other interventions.
The announcement comes as President
Barrack Obama submitted a budgetary request for an additional $200 million for
the initiative. This, the White House said, will bring its total funding
requested to $874 million for the next fiscal year, representing a 30 percent
increase from what it had for this year.
(C) Politico 09/03/16
No comments:
Post a Comment