IRS is Expending in Ghana!

This week’s Fist Bump Friday is dedicated to the PMI VectorLink Ghana Team for successfully expanding the geographical scope of indoor residual spraying in Ghana to include an additional district: the Tatale-Sanguli District (TSD). During early stakeholder engagements in TDS, the health directorate showed consistent malaria mortality among both children under five and adults since 2015. District Operations Coordinator, Tamara Amina Sulemana, and the rest of the Ghana team were ready to rise to the challenge of managing the preparation and execution of IRS in the new district, while also being mindful of the importance of implementing IRS in the context of the global, COVID-19 pandemic.

Tamara and the VectorLink Ghana team showed attention to detail throughout the process of preparing the Tatale-Sanguli District for IRS. The team organized and participated in meaningful stakeholder engagements, which resulted in productive collaboration leading up to the spray campaign. The local government contributed facilities and space for operations sites, households were timely enumerated with unique IRS identification numbers, operations sites were prepared according to the latest PMI Best Practices Manual Environmental Compliance specifications, all cadres of staff were trained, and mobile data collection devices were tested and ready for the entire district to collect its spray data digitally.

As a result of these efforts, it was not surprising that the hard work was rewarded with a spray coverage rate of 95.2%. By expanding IRS into TSD, VL Ghana is protecting 67,450 additional people out of which 11,812 are children under the age of five and 1,623 are pregnant women. District officials expressed appreciation of PMI assistance through IRS.

Kudos to Tamara and the Ghana team for their lifesaving work!