More Donations Fast-Tracked to Bolivia
Since 2008, Solidarity Bridge has delivered more than 35 tons of critical medical supplies and equipment to our partners in Bolivia via maritime shipping containers. Filling these 40-foot containers is a significant undertaking and we usually dedicate more than a year to gathering donated and purchased supplies and equipment to fill each one. These shipments are especially useful to deliver large equipment—from operating tables to laparoscopic and anesthesia towers—as well as bulk supplies needed in high volumes. Our partners at Puente de Solidaridad receive these supply stocks and store them for use over the next 18-24 months in our year-round programs.
Delivery in Cochabmaba of our 6th container shipment in July 2020
We shipped our sixth such container in May 2020. Planning had begun long before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, but we were able to adjust our procurement to include large amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE) and critical care supplies desperately needed to treat COVID patients. The shipment reached Cochabamba in record time, two months to the day after it left Illinois. But unlike with previous shipments, our partners proceeded immediately to distribute the new inventory. Throughout the country, both our longstanding partners and other institutions were desperate for supplies to confront the pandemic, which by then was a nationwide humanitarian crisis.
Without the ability for US missioners to hand-deliver materials during their travels throughout the year, we opted to send five smaller shipments in the second half of 2020. But in November we decided that the most efficient and effective way to address the urgent needs of our partners and patients would be to send another full-sized maritime container as soon as possible.
Procuring and inventorying supplies usually take more than one year.
Since then, our office has been busy receiving, inventorying, and repacking medical supply donations from very generous donors including missioner doctors Gay Garrett, John Gregory, George Lederhaas, and Dan Yousif. We also secured equipment donations from Miga Solutions, and purchased other key items. On Monday, February 8—a date predicted to be the coldest day of the winter so far—we warmly welcomed the truck sent by our partners at Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach (HSMO) to pick up 2,700 pounds of supplies from our Evanston warehouse. These items will be added to the 15,000 pounds of supplies we selected from the inventory at HSMO warehouse, which receives surplus medical supplies from hospitals throughout the Midwest. HSMO also loads the container and assists with the cumbersome documentation and logistical aspects of the international shipment.
The container is scheduled to depart the HSMO warehouse in Springfield, Illinois, on February 25. From there it will travel by highway and rail to New York, by ship to the Dominican Republic and on to Chile, and then over the Andes mountains and into Bolivia by road. We are hopeful it will reach our Cochabamba warehouse by May.
In addition to the mentioned donors and our friends at HSMO—especially Operations Manager Vicki Detmers, biomedical engineer Ratish Kumar, and truck driver Rod Horchem—we would also like to thank volunteers Pat McCourt, Fernando Ramos, Jaime Rojas, and Michael Canter, who braved the cold to help load these supplies. Mike Canter was also one of the volunteers who helped carefully inventory and pack the supplies over the previous months. Before the truck departed, Jaime Rojas, a deacon at our partner parish, St. Nicholas Church of Evanston, blessed its contents and all of those assisting in this effort as well as our patients and partners in Bolivia.
