The five-year fund raising campaign, was expected to realise over 500 million dollars, and would target international foundations, private and public sector partners, and the general population.

Mr Prince Kofi Amoabeng, the Chairman of the Ghana Malaria Foundation and also National Malaria Ambassador, at the media launch of the campaign in Accra on Wednesday, said the goal, was to develop  sustainable resource base for the fight against malaria in Ghana.

He called for strong collaboration with all stakeholders, particularly the media, the corporate sector, and public institutions including religious organisations, to push the agenda of addressing the country’s health challenge without relying so much on foreign aid.

He said cross cutting strategies to be adopted included effective targeted communication and public relations, transparent fund management and disbursement processes, recognition and acknowledgement processes, as well as the development of regional and district level processes would also be developed for fund collection and management.

Mr Amoabeng said the 15-Member Board of Trustees of the GMF would open a bank account and manage the proceeds realised from the campaign, maintaining a high sense of integrity, transparency and accountability to Ghanaians.

He said the funds raised would support programming, innovation in service provision, and also research into alternate means of the disease prevention and treatment in Ghana.The GMF, he said, was a unique private-sector led public partnership that would be charting a new territory in Ghanaian philanthropy to close the growing funding gap in malaria programming.

He said the Foundation would work together with the public and private sectors, and all stakeholders to make Ghana malaria free by 2030.Dr Keziah Malm, the Acting Programme Manager of the National Malaria Control Programme, giving a short background of the malaria burden of the country, said the disease was endemic with the whole population being at risk as it affected every sector of the economy.

She said the fight against malaria was currently still at the control stage with several interventions including the introduction of the Insecticide Treated Bed Net, Out-door Residual Spraying, and artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACTs), and the  Intermittent Preventive Treatment of pregnant women, being implemented.

She said though Ghana had been making progress implementing its NMCP, there were still gaps in achieving the targets in the previous plan, and lessons learnt from the implementation of the previous strategic plan had informed it current strategies. Dr Malm said Ghana was now implementing a malaria control programme with a goal that generally aimed at reducing death and illness due to the malaria disease, and had recorded some encouraging statistics showing a reduction in under five mortality and morbidity rates, yet much work was needed in the area of research and data collection for the effective management and total eradication.