How you can help us save lives in Papua New Guinea

If you have found the information here interesting, and if you think this work is valuable and worthwhile, then please don't forget, the future of much of the project is threatened by a lack of formal funding.

None of the work we are currently doing is supported by any formal funding, but with basic annual project costs of more than A$150,000.00 we are facing an uphill struggle to maintain our current impetus, and the launch of new projects, such as our plan to hire local health workers to teach the life-saving pressure-immobilisation bandaging technique of first aid to 25,000 families across rural Central Province, is having to be moth-balled until such time as funding support can be secured.

So how can people help this effort to reduce snakebite mortality in PNG?

There are several ways in which people can help:

Donations of crepe, elastic bandages

To get our snakebite first aid project off the ground we need 50,000 crepe, elastic bandages (i.e.: Handy crepe 15 cm elastic bandages) to distribute with the first aid materials already donated to us by CSL Limited. If you happen to be an executive at Smith & Nephew or Beiersdorf and are willing to consider donating the whole lot - I would absolutely love to hear from you, but donations of even a few bandages from the household medicine cupboard, will be just as warmly accepted. Every two bandages we get means another family we can teach to help themselves in an emergency...

Donations of equipment

We would welcome the opportunity to help hospitals, community groups and medical supply houses provide donations of basic and other medical equipment to facilities in PNG. Much of the basic equipment needed to treat snakebite (and other) patients is in short supply, and we are currently eager to obtain second-hand monitoring equipment, resuscitation gear, laryngoscopes, airway devices and ventilators to improve the capacity of Port Moresby General Hospital and other health facilities around the country.

Cash Donations

We really do need money desperately. Much of our work lies outside the normal academic-orientated criteria of traditional grant making organisations like the Australian Research Council and the National Health & Medical Research Council. They just don't fund applied research, education and training such as this.

The good news is that donations to the Australian Venom Research Unit are administered by financial boffins at the University of Melbourne who apply very exacting and strict financial reporting controls. That means every dollar donated gets used for the purpose it was donated for, without exception. If you donate money to AVRU for our work in PNG, that is exactly where your money will go.

And yes it is tax-deductible.

Donations to the Australian Venom Research Unit will help us save lives in PNG, so if you can spare even a few dollars, please do so.

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