Nkwanta, Dec. 24, GNA- Pregnant women, children under five years and the elderly in the Nkwanta District in the Volta Region, received assorted drugs free of charge to improve their health. The District Directorate of Health Services, under the Ghana Essential Medicines Initiative project (GEMI), was distributing the 70 assorted drugs that were on the United Nations essential drugs list. Dr Koku Awoonor-Williams, the District Director of Health Services, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that so far 391 beneficiaries had received drugs 273 of them being children and 118, pregnant women. The project is a private-public partnership between the district and a consortium of US based pharmaceutical companies, the Population Council, a non-profit research organization and Oak Foundation. Dr Awoonor-Williams said the project, which would run for an initial three years, would add more Community Based Health Planning and Service programme.

He said the programme was a base level health delivery initiative, which combined preventive and curative care through first line health care delivery personnel working in active coordination with community heads.

Dr Awoonor-Williams said the programme had an elaborate referral system, under which patients were transferred to appropriate health care delivery points sometime with the collaboration of commercial transport associations.

He said 10,000 Ghana cedis had been expended on family planning devices for men and women in the reproductive age and drugs on pregnant women and children less than five years at the end of the first quarter of the year.

Dr Awoonor-Williams said GEMI was providing over 600,000 US Dollars for the project, which would boost the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals.