The German agency for international cooperation, GIZ, has launched an initiative to provide hot meals for frontline health workers and the vulnerable.

Dubbed: ‘Food for Ghana’s Frontline’, the project will also help provide income opportunities for people in the hospitality sector who lost their jobs because of the COVID-19.

The project, which was launched by the Country Director of GIZ, Mrs Regina Bauerochse Barbosa, last Thursday, is being funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Mrs Barbosa said the project formed part of plans by the German government to support Ghana in the ongoing fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The project was started as a pilot on February 15, this year and has served a daily consignment of 100 packs of healthy hot meals, water and drinks to frontline health workers working with the Ghana Infectious Diseases Centre (GIDC),” she said.

The project seeks to provide at least 50,000 meals for frontline health workers over a period of one year, with plans to extend the service to other COVID-19 treatment centres.

Sustainability

Mrs Barbosa said it was imperative that the initiative was sustained in order for it to reach more facilities, more frontline health workers and more people who were in need during this era of the COVID-19.

She said fundraising platforms had been set up, in partnership with Crowdfrica, to give individuals and corporate agencies the opportunity to partner or support the project through donations.

According to her, donations could come in kind or in cash and made directly to the project.

Other organisations currently partnering the project are Food for All Africa (operators of West Africa’s first community food support centre), Polaris Technology Limited, the Labadi Beach Hotel, OkadaGH and The Chop Bar, with support from Kasapreko Company Limited and Tilly’s Farm.

Gratitude

The acting Director of the GIDC, Dr Joseph Oliver-Commey, expressed his gratitude to the GIZ and Food for All Africa for the project and appealed for more to be done to support other frontline health workers across the country.

“We were very happy when GIZ approached us to feed the workers. We had been thinking about this for a while. The cost of feeding the staff was a drain on the meagre resources that we have and so for some of us it is a welcome relief,” Dr Oliver-Commey said.

The Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Anthony Ofosu, said the Ghana Health Service was proud to receive the project because it was an approach that addressed our concerns.

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has had serious implications on the Ghanaian economy, including loss of jobs, especially in the hospitality and the transport sectors.