Madagascan Medical Safari (MMS)

HoverAid’s Madagascan Medical Safaris provide regular medical clinics to villages found around the rivers we work on. We work with local, Malagasy doctors, dentists and surgeons who volunteer to support the many different communities who live along the rivers.

We also work with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) who provide air transport to areas close to rivers, where HoverAid can establish base camps and transport doctors by hovercraft to villages along those rivers.

Emergency Relief

We provide aid relief after flooding and cyclones which regularly make landfall on Madagascar.

Hovercraft easily travel over land, water and mud, and crucially along waterways too shallow for ordinary boats, so we are often the first, and sometimes the only, organisation to arrive after flooding disasters strike, purely because other vehicles cannot get there.

90% of roads in Madagascar are dirt, so in the wet season when the country receives most of it’s annual 1.4m of rainfall, many roads become completely impassable, even with 4x4s, which is where we come in!

 

Water and Sanitation Health (WASH)

When you help us provide clean water to places that had none, everything changes! It makes drinking water safe (instead of a serious health risk!) and means good hygiene is finally possible.

More than half of Madagascar has no access to clean water, so we are working hard to put in new wells and pumps and clean old ones. We use Canzee pumps that do not require maintenance even with long term use. One pump can serve around 300 people which is roughly one village.

Bio sand filters use two ways of filtering water and work well because they are so simple. HoverAid sell them very cheaply to the community, so that the people can use them at home and also sell them at a small profit to others.

Community Health Programme (CHP)

The Community Health Programme ( CHP) is an educational initiative that aims to reduce preventable illnesses happening in rural communities.

Through our Madagascan Medical Safari clinics we see many people suffering from serious illnesses which, with the correct education, could perhaps have been prevented or at least be less severe. When CHPs have been run in districts, our doctors have seen clear reductions in consultations regarding preventable illnesses and huge reductions in the number of acute diarrhoea cases, so we know that the CHPs work!