Project Protect; Equatorial Guinea
Raquel and AnnaLisa
As you may or may not know, many vector-borne pathogens have persisted to cause sickness and death in developing countries due to lack of financial support, resources, and proper education.
Malaria is one example of a vector-borne pathogen that remains problematic throughout tropics around the globe. Malaria is caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Plasmodium and transmitted by the female mosquito of the Anopheles genus. The parasites multiply in the red blood cells (RBC’s) which cause them to rupture within 48-72 hours resulting in the infection of more RBC’s. Malaria can also be transmitted through the blood from a human mother to an unborn fetus, and rarely but possibly during blood transfusions. Symptoms initially include fever, headache, nausea, and vomiting, and eventually persist to anemia, bloody diarrhea, jaundice, convulsions, and coma. Untreated it causes quick and painful death.
Yellow Fever, another tropical vector-borne pathogen, is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus. After a three day incubation period one may experience pain, vomiting, and fever. About 15% of people will exhibit a toxic phase resulting in jaundice, bleeding from the mouth eyes nose, and stomach, and deteriorating kidney function leading to kidney failure. Yellow Fever also causes quick and painful death if left untreated.
We intend on using our five million dollar funding to help eliminate any future suffering from these 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, we 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, 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 others. Over time this may decrease their virulence in the area. The nets in combination with education to community leaders will help the population realize the importance of sleeping underneath them. An additional benefit if using nets is that they will protect against other prominent vector-borne diseases in the area such as Dengue Fever etc.
Secondly we would like to provide vaccinations for all members of the country. Vaccinating for yellow fever costs about $0.65-$7.00 per person and the malaria vaccine ranges from $0.08-$5.00 per person. This will consume about one quarter of our budget but will be well worth it. 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. Spraying costs about $3.00-$4.00 per house so it is relatively inexpensive. 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.
Budget pending, we would like to spend the remaining moneys on education 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 to keep members notified about the transmission by mosquito, the importance of netting for healthy and sick individuals, eliminating still water, getting vaccinated, improving their housing situations, etc.