Health-Ghana - The European Commission will from 2012 give additional support of 52 million euros to Ghana to reduce maternal mortality and achieve the MDG 5 targets. A statement issued by the EU office in Accra on Wednesday said this high quality project had been selected because it was aimsed to deliver concrete results by reducing maternal mortality and improving health care services.

Itr said the initiative to give additional support to African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, to help them achieve the Millennium development Goals, was launched by the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso at the UN summit in September 2010. 

The statement said with the additional funding the European Union would support the implementation of the 'MDG Accelerated Framework and Country Action Plan' which the Ministry of Health developed to combat maternal mortality.

The three key priority intervention areas identified are improving family planning, skilled attendance at delivery and emergency obstetric and newborn care, which will be supported through sector budget support.

The statement said with this funding the European Union had sought to join hands with Ghana to reduce the unacceptably high burden of mothers dying while giving birth by a minimum of two-thirds by the year 2015 .

The MDG initiative from the European Union mobilizes additional funding for African, Caribbean and Pacific countries whose MDGs are most off-track. The money stems from one of the EU's main instruments of development aid, the 10th European

Development Fund (EDF). It envisages a total extra financial effort of one billion euros.

The European Union is one of the leading donors of development aid in Ghana. 

Under the 10th EDF (2008 – 2013), an amount of402 million euros is to be allocated to Ghana by the EU.  With the additional support of 52 million euros, total EU aid to Ghana will increase by 12% to about 470 million during the period 2008 – 2013.

Pana 11/01/2012