Life at the office has been busy for the last couple of weeks, as we’re preparing for our banquet and for shipping containers to several countries in the next couple of months.
Earlier this week, we got word that our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with JFK Memorial Medical Center in Liberia had been finalized. The MOU is a document specifying our role at JFK, and its completion means that we can go ahead and send the container we’ve been working on. Mike and Daniel will be headed to Liberia again this summer with a team of volunteers to start work at JFK, where we’ll be building a trauma center.
We have just received a generator to ship to our hospital in Bolivia, since the hospital currently has no alternative source of power in the case of an outage. The generator weighs about 8,000 pounds, so it had to be loaded off the truck by a crane. Fortunately, the crane service around the corner from our office donated their time to help.
In two weeks, we will be shipping out a container of medical supplies and equipment to Karanda hospital in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is in the midst of a cholera outbreak, a health crisis adding to the distress caused by spiraling inflation. The other day, NPR reported that the salaries of many health workers in Zimbabwe are currently not worth enough to pay the bus fare to the bank to cash their checks. Please keep the people of Zimbabwe, and especially the staff at Karanda hospital, in your prayers.
As many of you know, we shipped a container of medical supplies to our hospital in Bolivia over a year and a half ago, only to have it sit in customs collecting dust for months on end. After talking with officials in Bolivia, corresponding with the Bolivian ambassador and the US ambassador to Bolivia (before their respective expulsions), and praying continually, we are pleased to report that the container has finally been released. Its contents, including ventilators, spine boards, and many other items that are vital to our hospital, have been unloaded and are being put to good use.
Today we shipped out another container, this one headed to Karanda Mission Hospital in Zimbabwe. Between 10:15 and 12:15, we packed a 40' semi trailer full of crates of medical equipment. We filled in the cracks with a few other items that the hospital had requested, such as folding chairs, and items for local children, such as soccer balls. The container will eventually be transferred from the semi onto a boat, which will carry it to Zimbabwe.
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