Salvadoran Sisters Ready For "The Avalanche"

SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador � When it strikes, Sister Milagro Perez says, she and her nuns from the Order of Josefina will be ready.

No, the kind and gentle �madre� is not speaking of an earthquake, a hurricane, a tidal wave, a mudslide or some other natural disaster to which her Central American country is prone. The director of the Centro de Salud Josefina Vilaseca in Ciudad Pacifica refers to the day her little hospital�s doors will open and be inundated with patients.

�It will be an avalanche,� she says. �People from all around will travel for as much as an hour to get here.�

But the small staff will be well prepared to receive them thanks to a recently sent 40-foot container of medical equipment and supplies sent by Clear Path International and the Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island.

In 2006, Clear Path gathered hospital beds, gurneys, exam tables, patient scales, crash carts, lab equipment, wheelchairs and myriad boxes of surgical supplies from Group Health and other donors in the Seattle area and sent them to San Miguel.

The Bainbridge Club paid for the shipping and provided volunteers for the loading party, while the Rotary Club of San Miguel made sure it got through Customs and made it to Sister Perez� hospital.

The immaculately tiled and tidy compound, whose construction was funded by a grant from the Spanish government, is on the outskirts of a poor barrio near San Miguel, El Salvador�s second-largest city. The barrio�s population is 64,000. The average income hovers around $150 a month.

The provincial hospital is 10 minutes away in San Miguel, but it is overflowing with patients and staff accept payments from the better-off patients, which means those who can�t afford to grease the skids wait in line all day and may still go home without receiving treatment.

Sister Perez will charge everyone the same $3 but will wave the fee for those who can�t afford it. No one will be denied treatment, the Catholic nun says. Most of the facility�s medical staff of 10 are volunteer professionals or nuns, but if the hospital opens its doors by this spring the government has committed to provide medical personnel with training and compensation.

The shipment to El Salvador is part of CPI�s medical donations program under which 64 containers of medical and other kinds of relief goods have been sent to 25 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The organization and the Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island are already collecting items for a second container of goods possibly in collaboration with the Rotary Club of Modesto, California.