Project Hope's Budget Break Down
Project Hope intends on using our funding to help eliminate any future suffering from Yellow Fever and Malaria diseases in the small country of Equatorial Guinea. The population there is approximately 486,900 people and it is located in tropical Africa. Our budget will be divided and utilized in various useful projects.
First and most importantly, Project Hope would like to provide mosquito netting for the entire population. Nets range from 7-10 dollars each and they sleep two people. Although this effort will consume about half of our funding ($2,069,325), we feel it will be our most effective contribution because the mosquitoes carrying the pathogens travel at night. If the mosquitoes cannot effectively bite people then the diseases will be unable to spread to other uninfected hosts. Over time this hopefully will decrease their virulence in this area. The nets in combination with education to community leaders will help the population realize the importance of sleeping underneath them. An additional benefit of using nets is that they will protect against other prominent vector-borne diseases in the area such as Dengue Fever.
Secondly we would like to provide vaccinations for all members of the country. Vaccinating for yellow fever ($936,933) costs about $0.65-$7.00 per person and the anti-malaria drugs ($618,363) ranges from $0.08-$5.00 per person. Vaccinating against these two major diseases will help decrease transmission and virulence of Yellow Fever and Malaria.
Another financial contribution will go toward the DDT spraying effort ($365,175). Spraying costs about $3.00-$4.00 per house. It has shown to reduce malaria 61% over-all. In many areas of this region DDT spraying has already been completed due to newly found sources of oil. The United State’s has increased their interest in this area which has expanded funding. Additional contributions of 7.8 million dollars have been supplied by Marathon Oil and Noble Energy. The current efforts by Bioko have reduced malaria by 80% in some regions. Although promising, the effort may be short-lived due to conflicting opinions that DDT spraying will only reduce the pathogen temporarily due to the mosquitoes’ ability to cross borders over time.
The remaining money will be spent on education($444,239.50) for community leaders and families, draining and removal of stagnant water, and possibly improving the housing situation in areas where housing is a major issue. We realize that education will be intertwined with other efforts such as netting, vaccines, and spraying but we intend on organizing significant community programs($222,119.75) to keep members notified about the transmission by mosquitos, the importance of netting for healthy and sick individuals, eliminating still water, getting vaccinated, improving their housing situations ($444,239.50).
Half of the educational funding will be used to educate the medical staff of Equatorial New Guinea ($222,119.75). A one day tutorial will be given with the incentive of one days pay. The average medical worker earns approximately $500 a month of which there a total of 308 staff members including nurses, doctors , and midwives. The total cost of this incentive with be approximately 5,236 dollars, a small price to pay to insure all those available will attend. The remaining funding will be provided for teachers cost and materials necessary to provide the staff with adequate symptom recognition and treatment options. If the staff are provided with the education of treatment procedures the number of deaths can be dramatically reduced, due to the price of antibiotics treatment being extremely low for both Yellow Fever and Malaria approximately $.08-&.50 person.
Cost of vaccines based on one in four being in any area of
higher virulence stains being more costly. The cost of Anti-malaria drugs is
based on the same scale. Cost of DDT spray based on four people per household.