On 22 March 2012, four adventurous volunteers are driving two vehicles from Southampton to the Upper East Region (UER) of Ghana where they'll be converted to ambulances. Ambulances are desperately needed. One in nine children here die before their fifth birthday and there is one doctor to every 36,000 people. The region, the size of Cyprus, has only seven working ambulances for a population of 1 million.

Boosting this number of emergency vehicles will save lives.

Among those travelling in the ambulances will be anaesthetist Malvena Stuart-Taylor who will ensure everyone is put to sleep each night, Ben Allenby, a well-upholstered upholsterer and 6'6"rugby player and aspiring history graduate, Nick Eastcott a former hospital manager and founder of the G.A.S. scheme and Bob Chaundy, a journalist and former school friend of Nick’s who has travelled with Nick before and has somehow lived to tell the tale.

The appeal is part of a link that has been established between Ghana Health Service, a local child rights organisation AfriKids and Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust. Known as the G.A.S. Partnership for Health, the scheme ensures medical staff from Southampton lending their clinical expertise to the UER’s health service and providing training and equipment for its personnel.

We need funds to buy the vehicles and to get them to Ghana. We also may need it to pay ransoms to Mauritanian guerrillas after they kidnap us! So any contributions would be most welcome.

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