Budgetary Failures At MMDAs Affront To Fight Against Malaria

The failure of the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to prioritise malaria control programmes in the district's financial plans and budgets is an affront to measures to fight the disease.

Again the absence of guidelines and weak compliance for the utilisation of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) for malaria, slighted the values intended to be achieved in the fight against the disease.

These came to light during a sensitisation workshop at Adaklu to seek information towards addressing how the 0.5 percent was being used to fight malaria at the local level.

It also aimed to validate a study in order to seek redress by stakeholders in the use of the malaria fund in line with the 2019 assessment of inflows into MMDAs, which was commissioned by People for Health (P4H), a USAID funded programme.

Mr Richard Anani Adortse, Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of P4H, said compliance by MMDAs with budget guidelines from the Ministry of Finance had brought a disconnection between DACF and directives from the Ministry of Finance.

He said the gap between the HIV and Malaria funding needed to be addressed to bring clarity to what exactly the 0.5 percent was supposed to be used for.

Mr Eli Tsikata, Adaklu District Coordinating Director, said the erratic release of the DACF, which usually came without guidelines reducing the usage of the 0.5 percent fund to the discretion of the Assemblies to solve emerging issues at the Assembly level in relation to healthcare delivery.

He said the District Medium Term Development Plans (DMTDPs) and the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) for malaria Control programme must be aligned towards achieving the gains of eliminating malaria from the communities.

Source: GNA