Sary Math crouches down between two pallets of shrink-wrapped boxes of surgical supplies. He sets his feet against one and presses his back against the other until the whole stack behind him moves slightly towards the inside container wall.
He has just created a bit more space between the pallets, enough to fit a stack of extra boxes in the shipment we�re sending to Cambodia: several hundred thousand dollars worth of surgical supplies and medical equipment for five hospitals and charities there.
Just like the ones Sary and I have loaded before, this container will have a lot of items the hospitals are looking for: beds, gurneys, exam tables, suction machines, wheelchairs, crutches, walkers, ventilators, an anesthesia machine, an incubator and everything they might need to perform surgeries.
But in one way, this one isn�t like the others. It�s a milestone: Number 50 since we started sending donated hospital relief goods four years ago and I still can�t quite believe it. If anyone would have told Sary and me we�d be up to that many when we begun, I would have been incredulous.
I met Sary at the Cambodian Honorary Consul�s office in Seattle in early 2001. He was with some men from the Cambodian American community who wanted to help pay for a shipment of four containers to Preah Ket Mealea Hospital in Phnom Penh. An American Vietnam veteran living in Kamloops had alerted us to the liquidation of three hospitals there and we were looking for a way to pay for the container shipments at $2,500 a piece.
Sary helped raise the money for those first containers and he has been volunteering with medical shipments ever since. We now have a great partner in Canada who raises the funds to cover the shipping cost of our containers, which have gone to Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, India, Malawi, Uganda, Honduras, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Brazil, Jordan and the Philippines.
Earlier this year, we were offered a very large donation of exam tables by Midmark Corp. in California. With the help of volunteer Lucas Hess in Sacramento, we have loaded 20 containers with 44 tables each for hospitals and ministries of health on almost every continent.
It hasn�t been hard to locate the donations. Our informal network of referrals has grown over time and many donors call us after googling �medical donations� on the web. We can source almost anywhere in the country as long as we know someone local who can inspect the donation.
We stage loading parties to get the items in the container. For this last shipment, we had quite a crew: Sary and his friend Youssef, Mark Holmgren (also a longtime volunteer), Niki Xxxxx (who contributed a ventilator to the shipment for a children�s hospital in Siem Reap) and Frank Cole (a Vietnam veteran from Yakima).
We ordered a high-cube container, which has two extra feet of height inside. That way, we could stack mattresses or boxes on top of the equipment or pallets. Usually, we have only two hours to fit everything in before the trucking company starts charging us to have the driver standing by.
We�re a lot faster now and there�s not much daylight in the �can� when we�re done. Very little space gets wasted. There�s no waste in any aspect of the program. We have donated warehouse space in Georgetown near Boeing Field thanks to the generosity of Kevin Sutherland of Commercial Floor Distributors. Nick Zarcadas, an electrician on Bainbridge Island, donated his old Chevy Astro van to Clear Path to round up smaller donations of equipment and supplies. We rely almost exclusively on volunteers to load the shipments.
Most of the time, we don�t even store the donated items. We apply a just-in-time collection method, ordering the container straight to the donor�s doorstep if there is enough stuff to fill a container and there often is: from hospitals turning over their equipment, from nursing homes, and from clinics.
It�s a form of recycling that makes all the sense in the world. The equipment donated in the Untied States is often in very good condition, though government regulations or new technology have made it obsolete in this market. But in Southeast Asia, where we ship most of the goods, it�s received with open arms.
For instance, a lot of medical facilities here are getting rid of their mechanical beds, the ones you crank to change the position of the patient�s back or legs (this is more critical than one would think for the proper healing of limb injuries and other conditions). They are being replaced with electrical beds that require the push of a button to adjust.
But hospitals in developing countries prefer beds that can be adjusted manually because even if patient rooms or wards have enough electrical outlets, they like to save on their utility bill. And, some countries are prone to blackouts, making the beds inoperable.
So, we�re at 50 thanks to the people whose name I have mentioned and many others. To Sary, Lucas and all you volunteers, donors and sponsors, let�s celebrate this milestone and then do another 50!
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