Noguchi receives US$100,000 support from ATC Ghana to fight COVID-19
ATC Ghana, a provider of telecoms infrastructure, has together with the American Tower Foundation donated US$100,000 to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) to assist in the fight against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Ghana.
The Chief Executive Officer of ATC Ghana, Mr Yahaya Yunusa, speaking at the presentation ceremony on Tuesday [July 7, 2020] said Noguchi – where tests are conducted for COVID-19 – is very strategic to the fight against the virus.
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According to Mr. Yunusa, the institute deserves all the support it can garner and the gesture by ATC Ghana and the American Tower Foundation is their way of supporting the research institute to continue to execute their mandate during the period of the pandemic.
“We have seen that they made a tremendous impact and progress with regard to fight the pandemic in Ghana. We expect that we should be able to get the maximum impact of our donation through this channel because we have seen that they are into research, testing and at the forefront of fighting the pandemic.
As the leading biomedical research centre in Ghana, we applaud your leadership and the key role you have played, and continue to play - in testing, research and training of frontline workers during this COVID-19 pandemic,” the chief executive officer added.
The Director of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, Professor Abraham Kwabena Annan, who received the donation on behalf of the institute praised ATC Ghana and American Tower Foundation for their gesture.
He said the fight against the pandemic has reached a stage where the support of corporate entities will be crucial in attaining the institute’s mandate.
“This donation is a highly welcome one because it has been planned strategically to advance the mandate of the institute. Our plan for this donation, is to use some of the funds directly on COVID-19 response through testing and detecting infections in vulnerable people.
This is to ensure early detection so that people who are infected and have the potential of spreading the disease are identified while isolation measures are put in place to augment the infection prevention control protocol,” Prof. Annan said.
According to him, as the lead test center, Noguchi receives samples in thousand folds which stretches its resources and donations from corporate entities like ATC Ghana and others make it easier to continue to test more people.
Ghana’s COVID-19 case count as at Tuesday July 7 is more than 21,000 with the number of recoveries/discharged far in excess of 17,000.
