Health Education Drops

Medicine on the Move is pleased to announce that further to many years of development and testing, we are now approved by the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority to implement the Bag- and Bottle-Drop health and related education systems as part of ETCHE (Encouragement Training for Community Health Empowerment) and its part in the INSCI (Integrated National Schistosomiasis Control Initiative) through our extensive collaboration with WAASPS. Using the Zenith CH701 aircraft with its built in Ghana airframe, equipped with the reliable Austrian made Rotax 912 UL 80Hp engine, we will commence outreach activities using innovative in-country developed techniques in the next ten days, weather permitting.

This has been announced this morning at the First National Schistosomiasis Forum, held at Akosombo, Ghana in front of an international audience comprising of parasitologist and leaders of health and related programmes in Ghana and West Africa, and will permit accelerated access to many, otherwise inaccessible, communities. The WAASPS/MoM developed delivery system, via the specially adapted CH701, will be an essential tool in the forthcoming campaign against the second most socio-economically devastating parasitic disease in Sub-Saharan Africa. With over ten thousand kilometres of potentially infected water frontages, and an estimated fiteen million cases per year in Ghana, MoM sees the attack on Schisto as an integral part of the ETCHE programme.

This approval comes at the end of an eighteen year vision of using light aviation to reach the rural folks of Ghana in some very hard to get to places, many of which have never before had attention focused on them and their challenges - let alone contact made, support and encouragement provided. Through the MoM projects and its partners in WAASPS and the AvTech Academy, young Ghanaian women, from the rural areas, have trained hard and are now ready to make this a reality. The vision of West African reaching West African to bring about change for greater Community Health Empowerment and socio-economic sustainability is about to take to the skies.

Demonstrations of the drop methodology will be made by Patricia Mawuli Nyekodzi and Lydia Wetsi to delegates and invited guests tomorrow, Friday 16th March at Kpong Airfield.

Medicine on the Move is a registered Charity in England and Wales, recognised in Ghana by the Department of Social Welfare as an NGO, our 501c3 status in the USA is pending (we are currently accepting US donations through the Silicon Valley Community Foundation).

For more details please contact us at info@medicineonthemove.org