Projects to be financed in 2007:
Total needed: USD 40,000

We have two main projects for 2007 that we will be looking to finance through our fund-raising campaign.
The first one will be to continue our support of the great work that Samusocial Peru is doing in Huaycan near Lima (USD 9,000). 
The second one will be with Medical Mission For Children (MMFC), a US based 501c3 charity: we will be the sole sponsor of their next mission to Peru (USD 31,000).

Samusocial Peru:

In 2006 we launched with Samusocial Peru  a program to help fight tuberculosis in Huaycan (see below: "Projects financed in 2006 and currently being executed"). In 2007 we will continue to bring our financing support to this great project. As soon as the current grant is over, we will roll it over with a new one. The amount will be the same: around USD 7,000.00 (seven thousand dollars). The purpose will also be the same: making sure that the people and the children under treatment for tuberculosis at the "Centro de salud" of Huaycan are not suffering from malnutrition so that we can significantly increase the treatment's chance of success. This second grant will go only towards buying the vitamins supplements and providing food for the "cantina" as the spending to build the "cantina" and the detection laboratory was done with the first grant. This means the grant will last longer: One year instead of 6 months. We will have to roll it over in July 07 when the current grant will expire.

Last year we financed the purchase of Samusocial Peru second ambulance (see below). We thought it would be nice to continue being involved this year with the ambulance, so we decided that we would cover the year's cost of gasoline and of medicine supplies. This should be around USD 2,000.00 (two thousand dollars).
 

Medical Mission For Children (MMFC):

We met with the board of directors of MMFC, we also had several meetings and discussions with their management. We had conversations with pediatricians who did participate as volunteers in several missions. While talking to these doctors and surgeons we felt their passion and we could easily understand the result of their work: lives forever changed thanks to a surgical procedure that in our rich countries is performed as a matter of course when in these poor countries too many people simply cannot afford it.

So we decided to go ahead and finance the next MMFC's Peru mission in October 2007.

MMFC started going to Peru in 2003 with a team performing cleft lip and palate repair at the Cuzco Regional Hospital. There is a lot of poverty in Cuzco and there are many cleft patients that are left untreated. The fourth MMFC trip to Cuzco took place in October-November 2006: 28 team members participated (surgeons, pediatricians, dentists, nurses, etc...), 80 patients were screened, 46 surgeries (cleft lips & palates, cleft lip rhinoplasties, pharyngeal flaps, etc...) were performed, the dental team treated 69 patients and 119 procedures were executed.

The next trip will take place in October-November 2007. It will involve 25-30 team members who will be performing cleft lips/palates and other surgeries as well as dental procedures. 

The cost for last year’s trip was USD 31,000.00 (thirty one thousand dollars). This money was spent in airfare to bring the team to Cuzco and in very reasonable lodging/food for the team in Cuzco. The team members are all volunteers. They are doing this on their vacation time and they do not take any financial compensation.
The cost for the 2007 mission (October-November) should be approximately the same and it is our objective to raise the funds so that we can entirely finance this fifth trip to Cuzco. 
 

Projects financed in 2006 and currently being executed:
Total actually raised: USD 22,000

We have now raised the money for our first two grants. Both grants went to the Samusocial Peru for two very specific programs. Both will be based in Huaycan, one of the very poor neighborhoods surrounding the capital city of Lima.

The first grant (USD 7,000.00) went towards the financing of a six months program structured by the Samusocial Peru to help children fight against tuberculosis in Huaycan. The program started in January 2007

The second grant (USD 15,000.00) was done in December 2006 and was used by the Samusocial Peru to finance the acquisition of their second "mobile unit" (ambulance).
 

Tuberculosis in Huaycan:

Tuberculosis is widespread in Huaycan. Hundreds of persons (including many children) are already sick or at risk of getting sick. Some children have already died of the disease for lack of proper treatment.
The Peruvian Health Ministry has put in place a program to fight the disease that is working well: It is free, patients come daily to the health center ("Centro de Salud Senor de los Milagros") in Huaycan to take their medicine. They have to take it in front of the nurse. This control is essential: at the start of the program, nurses were just giving the medicines to patients so that they could take them later, at home. They then realized that some patients were throwing the medicines away or reselling them.
The main problem now is that most of the children under treatment are not nourished as they should. Malnutrition weakens the organism and makes treatment much more difficult. Children are lacking proteins in their diet. Malnutrition makes the treatment not effective and the children do not get cured. This can be catastrophic as the children then become "multi-resistant" and thus end up needing a much heavier (and much costlier) treatment.

The project's objective is to reinforce the tuberculosis treatment of the "Centro de Salud Senor de los Milagros" of Huaycan by offering to the children under treatment (and their families) nutritional complements as well as detecting new children with tuberculosis that are not under treatment and convince their parents to bring them to the center for treatment.

All children under treatment will get a protein rich breakfast every  morning when they come to the Center to get their medicine. The breakfast will be had at the Center, not taken away. Specially undernourished patients, adults or children, will receive an additional vitamin supplement. In order to monitor the situation, a nutritionist will follow all the children under treatment by being present at the Center at least once a month. Finally, several information campaign about the disease, its cure and about the Center will be launched by Samusocial Peru in Huaycan. They believe that the quantity of people sick of tuberculosis is much bigger than the group of people actually receiving treatment at the Center. It is still a taboo subject in Huaycan and a lot of people reject treatment. As a result, a lot of children are at risk of dying of a perfectly curable disease. This effort will help identify those children and inform their parents so that they send them to the Center for treatment.

This grant will also finance the creation of a laboratory at the Center allowing for an easier and faster detection of new cases of tuberculosis. The process so far has been to send the samples to Lima for analysis. This can take several weeks. With the new lab precious time will be gained.

As mentioned above, the duration of the program will be six months, and its cost is USD 7,000.00 (seven thousand dollars).
 

Second "Mobile Unit" for Samusocial Peru:

Samusocial Peru is concentrating its efforts in Huaycan, one of the Pueblos Jovenes (poor neighborhoods) that surround the capital, Lima. It operates one mobile unit that goes daily to Huaycan in search of people, mainly children, in need of immediate medical assistance. The children of Huaycan and their families face many medical and psychological problems such as family violence, sexual abuse, alcoholism, depression, and respiratory and intestinal diseases. Malnutrition is an issue for many children. The mobile unit is composed of a social worker, a nurse and a driver. They cruise the neighborhood in order to care for and listen to people in social and medical emergency situations. They organize their actions around three main missions: medical assistance, psychological support and preventive education.

In order for them to double their interventions and to reach parts of Huaycan that they do not know yet, they need a second ambulance. The new team operating the new unit will be (as for the first ambulance) personnel dispatched from the Peruvian Health Ministry and the Municipality of Ate.

The cost of the brand new Peugeot Boxer is USD 15,000.00 (fifteen thousand dollars). It was bought from the Peugeot representative in Lima, Peru.