Lotus Village Project - Compassionate Aid Through Direct Action

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Project:
West Africa Malaria Prevention

Project Number: WAMP 1
Project Place: Upper East Region, Ghana
Start Date: August 2007
End Date: Ongoing

An estimated one million people die each year in Africa from malaria. In fact, 90% of all deaths in the world today from malaria occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of these deaths are children under 5 years old.

Infection is caused by the mosquito Anopheles gambiae, which is very widespread and difficult to control. Research has shown that the most cost-effective way to curb infection is simply to sleep under an Insecticide Treated Net (ITN).

Our target country, Ghana has a population of 22.4 million people with about 31.4% of the population below the poverty line, earning less than $2 per day. Malaria is endemic throughout the country with over 90% of the population at risk of endemic malaria.

The Lotus Village Project has focused on curbing malaria transmission in poor Fra Fra (ethnic group) villages in the Upper East Region of northern Ghana, West Africa. The Fra Fra are traditional subsistence farmers who live in small villages rife with malaria. We have seen some of the worst suffering due to malaria here first-hand and decided it was a good target location for our first pilot malaria education and free ITN program. Since the Fra Fra people are remote, almost 800 kilometers north of the capital; Accra; larger Ghanaian aid organizations with offices in the capital have largely “forgotten” to have their “fight malaria” campaigns arrive in the Fra Fra villages.

In September 2007, we delivered 300 free ITN’s to the Fra Fra and our aim is to provide as many ITN’s to as many villagers as possible for free with our focus being young children and pregnant women. We hand delivered these nets and set up village malaria education forums with the assistance of local Fra Fra volunteers. The project was a stunning success. We rented a truck and drove across the Sahel (there are no roads where we worked) and stopped at villages and held “village meetings.”

With our translator (the Fra Fra speak Gruene, a local tribal language in northern Ghana), we explained malaria transmission and how to use ITN’s properly. In our educational meetings, we demonstrated how to set up the nets to the assembled villagers and then asked a few women with young children if we could set the nets up in their homes as a model for other villagers to see. This proved to be a valuable lesson for the village, as many villagers had never seen a mosquito net used properly.

LVP has now set up an infrastructure in northern Ghana to effectively distribute ITN’s to the population. We have trained local volunteers and a truck to get out to the villages and deliver nets and offer easy-to-understand village meetings about malaria transmission. Since we were very effective with our pilot project, we are currently raising money for a larger scale operation to cover even more of the region with Insecticide Treated Nets.

As ITN’s have been proven to be the safest, most effective and affordable way to curb malaria transmission, LVP continues to raise money to purchase more wholesale nets from Netmark Ghana for immediate distribution to Fra Fra villages.

Project:
West Africa Malaria Prevention

Project Number: WAMP 2
Project Place: Upper East Region, Ghana
Start Date: 2009
End Date: Ongoing

Through the goodwill of one of our trusted business partners, we raised the funds to distribute another 1000 Insect Treated Nets (ITN’s) to continue our fight against malaria in the rural villages of the Upper East Region of Ghana. We targeted five new villages and distributed the nets to women and children in the villages. We presented the villagers with community meetings on the dangers of malaria and its prevention. We showed them how to properly use the ITN’s and take care of them.

We re-visited the villages we targeted in 2007 with our “Fight Malaria” campaign and found most villagers still using the nets. This was of course wonderful to see and made us motivated to continue this important work.