In West Africa with love: a nurse from Vancouver wants to send more cargoes of vital medical supplies

Two huge stalls in the Eastern Delta, which once housed thousands of chickens, are filled with hospital beds, intravenous poles, operating tables, and other medical equipment. A tireless nurse from Vancouver hopes to send to West Africa. Said Marj Ratel, a nurse from the Vancouver General Hospital, while she stood outside the barns

"(It) will be invaluable for these people for many months and many years. come. … Without many of these supplies, people and doctors would feel hopeless. "

Items – including furniture, pharmaceuticals, sheets and expensive devices such as surgical exercises – were considered surplus by BC hospitals, nursing homes, and doctors' offices. She established during her 40 years of nursing to donate these gifts to her foundation, the Korle-Bu Neuroscience Foundation, which helps West African countries improve their health systems.

She and a large group of volunteers filled to the brim and sent 11 shipping containers to Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone in the past two years. proposed the idea of ​​"hospital in a box" after the devastating epidemic of Ebola in West Africa. It killed more than 11,000 people between 2014 and 2005. 2016 and the already thin medical system has been flooded

Korle-Bu is trying to fund the shipment of four containers this summer and early fall, at a cost of about $ 10,000 each. One of them was sent this month to a hospital in Liberia badly damaged by a fire. A second is expected to be shipped in mid-August to a new neurosurgery unit in Nigeria. The other two would be sent in September or October because the charity is about to increase the money needed .

It would take at least four more containers and $ 40,000 more, empty the attics, which Ratel would like to do by the end of the year – if she can find the right one. ;money.

There is an urgent need to move food, not just to help West Africa. The Delta farmer who let Ratel store his donations for free in his barns for four years, may soon be selling the property.

"We could have sent a lot more containers, but we just sold it." Ratel said, calling for help to continue the humanitarian effort. "What Colombia -British could do … (is) bring hope in a box.A hospital-in-a-box packed with basic equipment that can provide security. "

L & rsquo; Jackson F. Doe Hospital in Tappita, Liberia, received one of the containers, stuffed with everything a hospital might need, including bases like wheelchairs and walkers and even a neurosurgical microscope used to perform brain surgery that saves lives.

"We deeply appreciate these containers that cross the Atlantic.They are filled with love from America's donors and volunteers. North and are a great source of hope for many on this side of the Atlantic Ocean, "said the hospital's Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Benedict B. Kolee. The importance of supplies can not be overestimated.In contrast to North America and Europe, the health care delivery systems of many African countries are terribly underfunded. Korle-Bu's supplies have greatly contributed to saving lives. "

Prior to the arrival in Tappita of appropriate hospital beds, for example, patients with different illnesses slept together, resulting in often, some of them, especially those i recover from anesthesia, would fall to the ground because of a lack of bed rails, he says.

He is particularly excited about the arrival of a prosthetic clinic given by a Vancouver Island doctor who will be retiring. to help "a large group of rebel veterans" whose limbs were amputated during the civil war and who needed well-adjusted artificial limbs. Many people have turned to crimes such as theft because their disability makes it difficult to access jobs, Kolee added, adding that prosthetics should "help integrate them into society."

Specializing in surgery and brain care, she co-founded the Korle-Bu Foundation, founded in 2000, to improve the care of the brain and spine in Ghana and other parts of the world. from other parts of West Africa. For nearly two decades, the agency has used specialists and supplies to train local medical staff and better equip hospitals for this specialty.

She volunteered in Liberia in 2014 when Ebola broke out. determined to further badist a struggling medical system that would be decimated by the deadly virus.

"Phebe (a hospital in Liberia) lost 23 of its 25 nurses to Ebola, they all have these crosses in their names," Ratel said.

It started with the goal of sending 1,000 hospital beds, but only had the money to send 650 up to now. The containers that she sent, however, have also been filled with other items that hospitals in poor rural villages need to fight a disaster, as well as other daily medical needs.

The estimated value of all items in each Elle is between $ 1 and $ 2 million.

Pbading through the barns of the Delta, Ratel shows boxes of used (but still usable) isolation dresses, doctor 's gowns and flannel sheets; unused needles and syringes from H1N1 flu; expensive sterilizers for disinfection of medical equipment; spinal boards made by a volunteer carpenter; 70 IV stands from the UBC hospital; and three dental chairs for Liberia, where dentistry does not exist.

There are catheters, bandages and partial rolls of medical tape – a big favorite among African doctors. "You are trying to attach a band aid to someone 's body when you do not have tape," said one of them to Ratel

There are also many wheelchairs, walkers and crutches.

"We did a stroke clinic in Techiman, Ghana, and people came with tree branches, some of them had walked for two days to get to our clinic. We had more than 350 people show up, "said Ratel. "You give someone some independence.Many people have said that they never left their huts in their villages because they had no way to get around." "

His donations also include indispensable pharmaceutical products, ranging from Tylenol to antibiotics, husband, pharmacist, security checks. "You have an infection and you get antibiotics.There you will die," said Ratel

.The Royal Columbian Hospital donated eight housekeeping carts, essential to maintaining the clean hospitals and reduce the spread of disease. "They do not have trolleys there. They are lucky to have a bucket. So, to get these carts, for them, it's gold, "she said.

Ratel has contacts in the US Medical industry to obtain all these supplies consume to rent trucks to pick up the goods.This changed about ten years ago when she met Rick Diamond, owner of Diamond Delivery, whose l 39; Wife was Ratel's patient for five months at VGH while she was battling an aggressive virus that was attacking her immune system

Ratel said, standing in one of the gigantic barns

Diamond The company, which oversees 200 owner-operated trucks, immediately offered to help carry its donations for free, and estimates that its drivers have picked up 1,000 trucks of medical supplies in the past decade across British Columbia. British, first for the brain and spine that Korle-Bu does in West Africa and more recently for canned hospitals. 19659002] Diamond does not want to talk about the time and the money that it cost him. "I'm not careful because I just want to do the right thing."

The entrepreneur, who is involved in several other charitable programs, encouraged more companies to get involved in this charity or others, either by offering their services or by donating d & # 39; money. "We all have to make progress, and it's not just money," he said.

After learning that Liberia, a county of five million people, desperately needs ambulances, Diamond is joining the Kamloops fire department. and plans to ship it to the country next month.

At present in Liberia, the wounded are often thrown to the back of a truck – without a spine or other medical equipment – to be transported to the hospital. "Recently, a young man fell off his bike, he got up and said," I have a sore neck. "They put him in a truck, got him drove on a bumpy road and, when he arrived at the hospital, he was paraplegic, "said Ratel, who is currently teaching emergency care at the University of Lagos in Nigeria. , will be back in Vancouver in time to help with the laborious task of packing the next container to be shipped on August 15. Intended for a new neurosurgery unit in a Nigerian hospital, it will include office furniture for the doctors, 11 bedside tables donated by a nursing home in Richmond, and a precious hospital examination table from Abbotsford

go to a maternity ward in Sierra Leone. Korle-Bu prepares packages containing blankets, baby clothes, diapers and knitted toys, which are pro put in pregnant women if they come for prenatal visits, allowing doctors to examine pregnant women and to detect any potential problem.

High mortality rates in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, "said Ratel." If a doctor can badess whether a woman needs a cesarean section, then you save mom and baby. "

But Korle -Bu needs money to send shipments, and has set up a Go Go Funding site for donations.

"The funding has been quite challenging, which really limited our plans to ship more things, "said Derek Agyapong-Poku, who grew up in Ghana and is the vice president of the badociation." We receive donations from hospitals and from all over the world. " other health care centers, but we do not have the money to ship them and they stay in our warehouse. "

Agyapong-Poku, Financial Manager of Ophthalmology UBC department, returned to his home country to see how important the first deliveries of supplies were. [19659002] "Its impact is huge. People sleep on beds, all different types of medical supplies, including needles and syringes. It's really helping people, improving the quality of health care delivery and extending life.

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for more information: kbnf.org [19659002] [email protected]

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