CPI Packs Another Shipping Container of Medical Supplies Bound For Laos

Remember how we got a 14-box truck from Hill Moving & Storage in Poulsbo a few weeks ago? Well, I had a chance to use it for the first time this week. On Tuesday, volunteer Brent Olson and I rounded up gurneys, operating room tables, vacuum pumps, tourniquets, etc. from Seattle Surgical Repair and we stopped by Overlake Hospital in Bellevue to pick up surgical supplies. We dropped those items off at the warehouse in Georgetown and the following morning volunteer Sary Math and I loaded the truck with mattresses, casting plaster, high-end orthopedic instruments and other items for our second container to Laos.

I drove the truck up Snoqualmie Pass and down to Ellensburg on Interstate 5, then branched off on Interstate 82 to Yakima. Just beyond Yakima is a small town called Wapato where a nursing home, Emerald Care, had offered us 46 hospital beds to send to Laos. I already had gathered a bunch of other goods for the National Rehabilitation Center in Vientiane, which distributes the items through a network of seven hospitals in Laos that provide orthopedic care. The new truck allowed me to bring those items over to the container that came to Wapato for the beds.

Our Veterans advisor Frank Cole and his wife Susan had orchestrated a crew to help us load the 40-foot high-cube container and the nursing home provided a forklift to heave the beds and parts in. Usually, it takes a crew of four to lift the bed frames up to the container and another crew of two or three to position them inside because donors seldom have a loading dock or a forklift. Spared our backs!

In early January, Clear Path was offered a container load for Laos through a donor to Universal Aide Society, the Canada-based nonprofit that sponsors much of our shipping and for whom we secure relief donations for its network of consignees elsewhere in the world. Through this partnership, we have shipped 65 containers to 25 countries, more than half of them to Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines).

We were introduced to the National Rehabilitation Center in Vientiane through the kind folks at COPE (Cooperative Orthotic & Prosthetic Enterprise), a group of NGOs working together to provide services for the country's many disabled, including landmine and UXO accident survivors. We met them last year on a four-day trip to Vientiane and promised we would help them with equipment and supplies.

Our second container loaded in Wapato included a number of goods they had asked for and others that are useful in any hospital, particularly the 46 hand-operated beds. The rest of the packing list with a total value of about $120,000 included 4 cast saws to cut plaster casts after bone setting or residual limb casting; 71 boxes of casting plaster; 28 boxes of gloves; 2 vacuum pumps; 4 pneumatic tourniquets; 5 wheelchairs; 2 exam stools; 1 patient lift; 1 cordless orthopedic reciprocating saw, 1 cordless orthopedic drill; and 1 hydrotherapy foot bath.

I want to thank Brent and Sary, our volunteers in Seattle; Jared and Scott from Seattle Surgical Repair; Leigh at Group Health; Chris and Marlene at Multicare Tacoma; Johnnie at Sunrise Medical; Terry and Jerry at Emerald Care in Wapato; and the Yakima crew: Frank, Susan, Steve, Ernie, Tim and Robert. Awesome job! And, of course, the Hill family for donating our great new truck.