Medical/Ambulance Boat Project for Africa

Medical/Ambulance Boat Project for Africa

Mobile water based medical clinic. Solution for health care on African waterways!

Overview

Global Charity Association’s (GCA) investigation of best economic way to provide health care is through use of medical boats. In many of the world's impoverished regions, health care is non-existent and this is in fact one of the major problems that exists today. This situation happens because of various factors, but two of the main reasons are:

1) due to difficult logistics and poor road conditions

2) high cost of permanent facilities.

The fact that 20% of the world's population lives on, or beside, waterways made us create one unique idea of a mobile clinic capable of navigating on water. This way one medical boat can cover a big area equivalent to 10, 25 or more small permanent medical facilities. Medical boats have extremely low price because we build only one mobile medical facility on one medical boat, instead of building 10 to 25 or more, small, permanent, land based medical facilities.

Project Summary

The project is to build ambulance care, dental and medical help at one medical boat for the treatment during flow of one of biggest rivers in the Africa. Our target rivers are Zambezi, Congo or Orange River. We have local contacts with three African community group people near every of these three African rivers that support medical boat initiative.  But final decision is not in our hands fully.  Main funders of our project have main power to decide where exactly help is more important. We understand that small details create final decision here. 

We concluded the ideal boat size for this purpose is 84 feet (25 meters) with 2 floors and minimum 7 ambulance rooms.  The desired treatment focus is emergency care and prevention, rather than long-term surgical care.  Medical boats like this offer several types of medical care such as general medical ambulance care, dental, eye care, and small surgery interventions.  Boat must be equipped with the supplies and equipment necessary for the medical care identified as needed for a specific region.

Our project has 2 phases:

Phase 1: Re-build medical boat

Cheapest and most quick solution is buying existing used aluminum hull boat, minimal year of boat production of 1998-2000. Then rebuild used boat by a professional shipbuilding team.  The boat will customized from a simple transport facility up to a mobile clinic, paramedic ambulance and on board surgery.

Phase 2: Add required medical equipment

We first must work on funding for buying and re-building adequate boat.  Re-building a boat is 6-7 months process.  While rebuilding the boat (6-7 months), we raise funds for phase 2: medical equipment funding.

Our calculations say that one Doctor and four Nurses to treat up to 500 patients per week using medical boat approach.  Possible additional solution is adding one veterinary doctor inside medical team and cover veterinary medical support at the same time.

Medical/Ambulance Boat provides maximum benefit to bigger population of African people; especially one project can cover a big area.  Sure, we understand that medical boats can not cover 100% health care, but we are sure this is a giant step solving with one project, lots of health problems in a big population area at once and have extremely low cost at final calculation based on size of covered population area.

Basic Medical Boat Technical Specifications

Here is, roughly, basic specification of boat size, hull material and engine power.

LOA: 79' till 84'

Beam: 16' till 17'

Hull Material: Aluminum

Engine/Fuel Type: Twin Gas/Petrol

Year of production:  1998-2000

Note: Full detailed boat characteristics are not available because we plan to buy a used boat with similar dimensions. We can't know exact other small parameters because we have not yet bought a boat. 

Image of planned used boat for buy you can find below:

Rebuilding boat plan (phase 1):

You can see rebuilding boat plan below.

1. Additional floor adding: Existing design of boat is fully adjustable to relative easy add one floor on top

2. Two diesel electric generators: Must be added for safety of medical facility

3. Solar cells: This is important part to implement. The design of the boat is perfect to add long solar cells area on the roof. This special solar system can produce lot free electric energy. This is a required part, because the maintenance of the boat will be a lot cheaper, fuel consumption lower, and mobility a lot better, and it is important because there is no electricity in Africa.

4. Air-conditioning: Air-conditioning implementation can help lot in high temperature working conditions.

Image of planned used boat rebuilding plan is below:

Important detail is that GCA has created connection with USA shipyard that would help with volunteer work by boat rebuilding and the start of the project. The cost of boat rebuilding will be 30-35% less than similar boat rebuilding by usual commercial shipyards.

Medical Equipment and Supplies (phase 2):

After the boat is rebuilt, Phase 2 starts: Adding required medical equipment.

Mobile Boat Clinic provides a wide range of cost effective delivery of Health Care and Medical Treatments to remote locations on land and river settlements. Usual mobile medical solutions include:

- General Checkup & Mobile Treatment Unit

- Disease Treatment Unit

- Mobile Laboratory for Blood, Urine and Pap Smears Analysis

- Ultrasound, Mammography, and Radiography (X-rays), and EKG Unit

- Positron Emission Tomography (PET) / Computed Tomography (CT) Scans Unit

- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Unit

- Mobile Ophthalmology Clinic

- Dental Care and Procedure Unit

Overview:

- Dental Equipment Package

- Diagnostic Screening Equipment & Accessories

 - Pre-Owned Mammography, X-Ray, Sonogram and EKG Equipment

 - Start-up Supply of HIV/AIDS and Malaria Medications, Wound Care Accessories, Condoms, Educational Aids, IV Solutions and Inject-able Accessories

Note: Built in medical equipment, ship equipment, and equipment delivery costs are not included in above prices. Final equipment list will be created depending on available funds. It is possible to buy minimal equipment to start and add more equipment with future humanitarian actions (after boat start work).

Optional/Future Humanitarian Project Plans

·         Global Charity Association as future plans wish work on supporting existence of Medical/ambulance boat after boat start exist as first.

·         Optional plan is build smaller boats (till 50 feet) for smaller rivers in future.