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23.04.2020 General News

German Support Ghana With €23m To Boost COVID-19 fight

German Support Ghana With 23m To Boost COVID-19 fight
23.04.2020 LISTEN

The German Government has made available an amount of 23 million Euro to assist Ghana in its response measures in curbing the spread of COVID-19.

Germany Ambassador to Ghana, Christoph Retzlaff announced this on social media on Thursday, April 23, 2020.

Out of the amount, 13 million Euro has been allocated as a first COVID-19 response to provide Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the Ghana Police Service.

The remaining 10 million Euro is also going into local COVID-19 response measures by Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs).

“Germany now made available 13 Mio EUR for Ghana as a first COVID response. Providing PPE for Ghana Police Service and 10 Mio EUR for local Covid response measures by Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies.#WeAreInThisTogether,” the Ambassador tweeted.

The coronavirus case count in Ghana is 1,154 as of Wednesday, April 22, 2020.

It indicates an increase of 112 new cases after president Nana Akufo-Addo lifted the three-week partial lockdown.

The country has also recorded 120 recoveries and nine deaths.

Support to KCCR

Already, Germany has given a grant of €650,000 to boost the capacity of the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR).

The support was announced by the German Embassy in Ghana, which said the grant is a rapid response measure to help fight the spread of COVID-19 in Ghana.

The Embassy said the amount is to help the centre modernize its facilities and buy consumables to enable to conduct more tests of suspected COVID-19 cases.

“As a rapid response measure to fight the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana, the German Government made available a 650.000 EUR grant to support the Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KCCR) to modernize its technical facilities and to buy consumables and reagents for more testing of potential COVID-19 cases,” the Embassy stated in a Facebook post on Friday.

It also remarked that “the institute's capacity to support fast isolation of infected people will be further strengthened” as a result of the grant.

“KCCR has already been supported and advised by a seconded German virologist, Dr. Tabea Binger, since 2016,” the Embassy added.

KCCR is one of the two high-level research centres in Ghana leading efforts in the testing of suspected COVID-19 cases.

It is a joint venture between the Ministry of Health (MoH), Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, and the Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine (BNITM), Hamburg, Germany. KCCR acts as an international platform for biomedical research in tropical medicine.

---citinewsroom

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