Ghana’s leading waste management company, Zoomlion Ghana Limited, has donated GHS120,000 to the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR).
The donation is to complement the efforts of the research institute to be able to carry out more COVID-19 tests in the country.
So far the institute has led a team of other research centres to conduct over 50,000 tests of coronavirus case samples within a space of four weeks as government intensifies the fight against the pandemic.
The Host of Good Evening Ghana on Metro TV, Paul Adom-Otchere, whose advocacy led to the gesture from Zoomlion said the donation aims at supporting government’s efforts in the fight against COVID-19.
“The story began when the guys from Noguchi and the University of Ghana graciously agreed to give me an interview on Good Evening Ghana on Metro TV and during the interview, they explained the sequencing that they had achieved and also the processes of the testing and they also explained that as much as they have been doing a good job they will need some more financing to be able to achieve results especially for the sequencing and also the testing. So after the program, I brought the attention of the request to the Jospong group of companies especially the Zoomlion company and I am delighted to report that within 24 hours of the request the company responded and this morning they are here to make a donation to the Noguchi and the University of Ghana group.”
Head of Communications at the Jospong Group of Companies, the parent company of Zoomlion, Sophia Lissa, commended Noguchi for their role in the fight against COVID-19.
“We know stories of countries that are not reporting much and it is all because they do not have the capacity to do testing. But our top people and scientists at Noguchi have put their lives on the line and are doing this for the nation and I think as a company we want to commend them and that is what has informed our decision this morning to respond to their call for support to do what they are doing and to do it to the best of their ability. We are here to support the Noguchi Memorial Institute with an amount of $20,000 for the good job that they are doing which translates to about Ghc120,000.”
She said her outfit will collaborate with other private entities to support the COVID-19 fight for the general good of society.
“As a leader in the environmental sanitation industry, Zoomlion has been concerned about the impact of COVID on the nation and for us, we believe that impact is just not the physical sickness that people are going through, there is the psychological bit, there is the emotional bit and worst of all the economic impact of this problem on our nation. And therefore we have tried to do whatever we can to minimize the surge and the impact on our people and that is why we have collaborated with a couple of media houses including Citi TV and we have also collaborated with the local government and rural development and currently, the Ghana Education Service through the Ministry of Education to ensure that we all pick up this fight and make sure that Ghana enjoys the best of time no matter what is going on but we believe that indeed no matter what is going on, this too shall pass.”
Receiving the donation on behalf of Noguchi, its Director, Prof. Abraham Kwabena Anang said the gesture by Zoomlion will augment its testing capacity.
“A very unique gesture of a presentation of $20,000, Zoomlion stands very tall among peers and we see Zoomlion very well, very clearly in this country. We all know the role that Zoomlion has been playing as far as personal and environmental hygiene is concerned, and we know even as we speak in this COVID era that Zoomlion again has assumed strategic positioning and leadership in providing wide-scale disinfection. As we speak, already at the University of Ghana, Zoomlion has started working and disinfecting lecture halls and various facilities and we are very grateful to the leadership of Zoomlion for this wonderful effort that you are making and we believe that this relationship adding on to the partnerships that we are building is going to go very far.”
“Again I would like to mention that we all know that the NMIMR of the UG working with stars and other people from WACDIP have been a lot of testing for COVID and I am happy to say that the testing is advancing well and in recent times we are able to do two to three thousand tests per day and that is a major achievement and it has all being possible because of the partnerships that we have been able to put together” he added.
