Prison inmates should insist on malaria testing – NGO

A team from the Hope For Future Generations (HFFG), a non-governmental organisation into health, has asked prison inmates to insist on being tested for malaria before treatment.

The NGO said this would help to avoid being treated for malaria when they were actually suffering from illnesses with symptoms similar to malaria.

The inmates were also encouraged to complete malaria treatment courses as the only surest way of curing malaria effectively.

The advice was given in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency after the HFFG team had undertaken a health screening exercise for inmates of the Sunyani and Sekondi prisons.

It was the HFFG’s social responsibility initiatives to inmates as part of the commemoration of the International Humanitarian Day.

The statement said the project was UKaid funded and supported by the staff of Western and Brong Ahafo regional offices of the Ghana Health Service while the National Malaria Control Programme donated 1,000 RDTs for the screening.

The two-year project is aimed at ensuring that 70 per cent of all malaria cases are tested and confirmed, using RDTs and microscopes.

In all, 480 inmates, comprising 180 from the Sunyani Central Prisons, 275 from the Sekondi Central and 25 from the Sekondi Female Prisons were sencitised and screened in two separate exercises in Sunyani and Sekondi.

They had their temperature, blood pressure and weight checked before being tested for malaria. The inmates who tested positive to malaria were treated.

They were educated on prevention by sleeping under treated mosquito nets.